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Though, for that matter, I know some characters about town who actually consider themselves injured and insulted if the dinner or the company is not to their liking. There is Guttleton, who dines at home off a shilling's-worth of beef from the cookshop, but if he is asked to dine at a house where there are not pease at the end of May, or cucumbers in March along with the turbot, thinks himself insulted by being invited. 'Good Ged!' says he, 'what the deuce do the Forkers mean by asking ME to a family dinner? I can get mutton at home;' or 'What infernal impertinence it is of the Spooners to get ENTREES from the pastrycook's, and fancy that I am to be deceived with their stories about their French cook!' Then, again, there is Jack Puddington--I saw that honest fellow t'other day quite in a rage, because, as chance would have it, Sir John Carver asked him to meet the very same party he had met at Colonel Cramley's the day before, and he had not got up a new set of stories to entertain them. Poor Dinner-giving Snobs! you don't know what small thanks you get for all your pains and money! How we Dining-out Snobs sneer at your cookery, and pooh-pooh your old hock, and are incredulous about your four-and-six-penny champagne, and know that the side-dishes of to-day are RECHAUFFES from the dinner of yesterday, and mark how certain dishes are whisked off the table untasted, so that they may figure at the banquet tomorrow. Whenever, for my part, I see the head man particularly anxious to ESCAMOTER a fricandeau or a blanc-mange, I always call out, and insist upon massacring it with a spoon. All this sort of conduct makes one popular with the Dinner-giving Snob. One friend of mine, I know, has made a prodigious sensation in good society, by announcing apropos of certain dishes when offered to him, that he never eats aspic except at Lord Tittup's, and that Lady Jimmy's CHEF is the only man in London who knows how to dress--FILET EN SERPENTEAU--or SUPREME DE VOLAILLE AUX TRUFFES.

CHAPTER XX--DINNER-GIVING SNOBS FURTHER CONSIDERED

If my friends would but follow the present prevailing fashion, I think they ought to give me a testimonial for the paper on Dinner-giving Snobs, which I am now writing. What do you say now to a handsome comfortable dinner-service of plate (NOT including plates, for I hold silver plates to be sheer wantonness, and would almost as soon think of silver teacups), a couple of neat teapots, a coffeepot, trays, &c., with a little inscription to my wife, Mrs. Snob; and a half-score of silver tankards for the little Snoblings, to glitter on the homely table where they partake of their quotidian mutton?

If I had my way, and my plans could be carried out, dinner-giving would increase as much on the one hand as dinner-giving Snobbishness would diminish:--to my mind the most amiable part of the work lately published by my esteemed friend (if upon a very brief acquaintance he will allow me to call him so), Alexis Soyer, the regenerator--what he (in his noble style) would call the most succulent, savoury, and elegant passages--are those which relate, not to the grand banquets and ceremonial dinners, but to his 'dinners at home.'

The 'dinner at home' ought to be the centre of the whole system of dinner-giving. Your usual style of meal--that is, plenteous, comfortable, and in its perfection--should be that to which you welcome your friends, as it is that of which you partake yourself.

For, towards what woman in the world do I entertain a higher regard than towards the beloved partner of my existence, Mrs. Snob? Who should have a greater place in my affections than her six brothers (three or four of whom we are pretty sure will favour us with their company at seven o'clock), or her angelic mother, my own valued mother-in-law?--for whom, finally, would I wish to cater more generously than for your very humble servant, the present writer? Now, nobody supposes that the Birmingham plate is had out, the disguised carpet-beaters introduced to the exclusion of the neat parlour-maid, the miserable ENTREES from the pastrycook's ordered in, and the children packed off (as it is supposed) to the nursery, but really only to the staircase, down which they slide during the dinner-time, waylaying the dishes as they come out, and fingering the round bumps on the jellies, and the forced-meat balls in the soup,--nobody, I say, supposes that a dinner at home is characterized by the horrible ceremony, the foolish makeshifts, the mean pomp and ostentation which distinguish our banquets on grand field-days.

Such a notion is monstrous. I would as soon think of having my dearest Bessy sitting opposite me in a turban and bird of paradise, and showing her jolly mottled arms out of blond sleeves in her famous red satin gown: ay, or of having Mr. Toole every day, in a white waistcoat, at my back, shouting, 'Silence FAW the chair!'

Now, if this be the case; if the Brummagem-plate pomp and the processions of disguised footmen are odious and foolish in everyday life, why not always? Why should Jones and I, who are in the middle rank, alter the modes of our being to assume an ECLAT which does not belong to us--to entertain our friends, who (if we are worth anything and honest fellows at bottom,) are men of the middle rank too, who are not in the least deceived by our temporary splendour, and who play off exactly the same absurd trick upon us when they ask us to dine?

If it be pleasant to dine with your friends, as all persons with good stomachs and kindly hearts will, I presume, allow it to be, it is better to dine twice than to dine once. It is impossible for men of small means to be continually spending five-and-twenty or thirty shillings on each friend who sits down to their table. People dine for less. I myself have seen, at my favourite Club (the Senior United Service), His Grace the Duke of Wellington quite contented with the joint, one-and-three, and half-pint of sherry, nine; and if his Grace, why not you and I?

This rule I have made, and found the benefit of. Whenever I ask a couple of Dukes and a Marquis or so to dine with me, I set them down to a piece of beef, or a leg-of-mutton and trimmings. The grandees thank you for this simplicity, and appreciate the same. My dear Jones, ask any of those whom you have the honour of knowing, if such be not the case.

I am far from wishing that their Graces should treat me in a similar fashion. Splendour is a part of their station, as decent comfort (let us trust), of yours and mine. Fate has comfortably appointed gold plate for some, and has bidden others contentedly to wear the willow-pattern. And being perfectly contented (indeed humbly thankful--for look around, O Jones, and see the myriads who are not so fortunate,) to wear honest linen, while magnificos of the world are adorned with cambric and point-lace, surely we ought to hold as miserable, envious fools, those wretched Beaux Tibbs's of society, who sport a lace dickey, and nothing besides,--the poor silly jays, who trail a peacock's feather behind them, and think to simulate the gorgeous bird whose nature it is to strut on palace-terraces, and to flaunt his magnificent fan-tail in the sunshine!

The jays with peacocks' feathers are the Snobs of this world: and never, since the days of Aesop, were they more numerous in any land than they are at present in this free country.

How does this most ancient apologue apply to the subject in hand?--the Dinner-giving Snob. The imitation of the great is universal in this city, from the palaces of Kensingtonia and Belgravia, even to the remotest corner of Brunswick Square.

Peacocks' feathers are stuck in the tails of most families. Scarce one of us domestic birds but imitates the lanky, pavonine strut, and shrill, genteel scream. O you misguided dinner-giving Snobs, think how much pleasure you lose, and how much mischief you do with your absurd grandeurs and hypocrisies! You stuff each other with unnatural forced-meats, and entertain each other to the ruin of friendship (let alone health) and the destruction of hospitality and good-fellowship--you, who but for the peacock's tail might chatter away so much at your ease, and be so jovial and happy!

When a man goes into a great set company of dinner-giving and dinner-receiving Snobs, if he has a philosophical turn of mind, he will consider what a huge humbug the whole affair is: the dishes, and the drink, and the servants, and the plate, and the host and hostess, and the conversation, and the company,--the philosopher included.

The host is smiling, and hob-nobbing, and talking up and down the table; but a prey to secret terrors and anxieties, lest the wines he has brought up from the cellar should prove insufficient; lest a corked bottle should destroy his calculations; or our friend the carpet-beater, by making some BEVUE, should disclose his real quality of greengrocer, and show that he is not the family butler.

The hostess is smiling resolutely through all the courses, smiling through her agony; though her heart is in the kitchen, and she is speculating with terror lest there be any disaster there. If the SOUFFLE should collapse, or if Wiggins does not send the ices in time--she feels as if she would commit suicide--that smiling, jolly woman!

The children upstairs are yelling, as their maid is crimping their miserable ringlets with hot tongs, tearing Miss Emmy's hair out by the roots, or scrubbing Miss Polly's dumpy nose with mottled soap till the little wretch screams herself into fits. The young males of the family are employed, as we have stated, in piratical exploits upon the landing-place.

The servants are not servants, but the before-mentioned retail tradesmen.

The plate is not plate, but a mere shiny Birmingham lacquer; and so is the hospitality, and everything else.

The talk is Birmingham talk. The wag of the party, with bitterness in his heart, having just quitted his laundress, who is dunning him for her bill, is firing off good stories; and the opposition wag is furious that he cannot get an innings. Jawkins, the great conversationalist, is scornful and indignant with the pair of them, because he is kept out of court. Young Muscadel, that cheap dandy, is talking Fashion and Almack's out of the MORNING POST, and disgusting his neighbour, Mrs. Fox, who reflects that she has never been there. The widow is vexed out of patience, because her daughter Maria has got a place beside young Cambric, the penniless curate, and not by Colonel Goldmore, the rich widower from India. The Doctor's wife is sulky, because she has not been led out before the barrister's lady; old Doctor Cork is grumbling at the wine, and Guttleton sneering at the cookery.

And to think that all these people might be so happy, and easy, and friendly, were they brought together in a natural unpretentious way, and but for an unhappy passion for peacocks' feathers in England. Gentle shades of Marat and Robespierre! when I see how all the honesty of society is corrupted among us by the miserable fashion-worship, I feel as angry as Mrs. Fox just mentioned, and ready to order a general BATTUE of peacocks.

CHAPTER XXI--SOME CONTINENTAL SNOBS

Now that September has come, and all our Parliamentary duties are over, perhaps no class of Snobs are in such high feather as the Continental Snobs. I watch these daily as they commence their migrations from the beach at Folkestone. I see shoals of them depart (not perhaps without an innate longing too to quit the Island along with those happy Snobs). Farewell, dear friends, I say: you little know that the individual who regards you from the beach is your friend and historiographer and brother.

I went to-day to see our excellent friend Snooks, on board the 'Queen of the French;' many scores of Snobs were there, on the deck of that fine ship, marching forth in their pride and bravery. They will be at Ostend in four hours; they will inundate the Continent next week; they will carry into far lands the famous image of the British Snob. I shall not see them--but am with them in spirit: and indeed there is hardly a country in the known and civilized world in which these eyes have not beheld them.

I have seen Snobs, in pink coats and hunting-boots, scouring over the Campagna of Rome; and have heard their oaths and their well-known slang in the galleries of the Vatican, and under the shadowy arches of the Colosseum. I have met a Snob on a dromedary in the desert, and picnicking under the Pyramid of Cheops. I like to think how many gallant British Snobs there are, at this minute of writing, pushing their heads out of every window in the courtyard of 'Meurice's' in the Rue de Rivoli; or roaring out, 'Garsong, du pang,' 'Garsong, du Yang;' or swaggering down the Toledo at Naples; or even how many will be on the look-out for Snooks on Ostend Pier,--for Snooks, and the rest of the Snobs on board the 'Queen of the French.'

Look at the Marquis of Carabas and his two carriages. My Lady Marchioness comes on board, looks round with that happy air of mingled terror and impertinence which distinguishes her ladyship, and rushes to her carriage, for it is impossible that she should mingle with the other Snobs on deck. There she sits, and will be ill in private. The strawberry leaves on her chariot-panels are engraved on her ladyship's heart. If she were going to heaven instead of to Ostend, I rather think she would expect to have DES PLACES RESERVEES for her, and would send to order the best rooms. A courier, with his money-bag of office round his shoulders--a huge scowling footman, whose dark pepper-and-salt livery glistens with the heraldic insignia of the Carabases--a brazen-looking, tawdry French FEMME-DE-CHAMBRE (none but a female pen can do justice to that wonderful tawdry toilette of the lady's-maid EN VOYAGE)--and a miserable DAME DE COMPAGNIE, are ministering to the wants of her ladyship and her King Charles's spaniel. They are rushing to and fro with eau-de-Cologne, pocket-handkerchiefs, which are all fringe and cipher, and popping mysterious cushions behind and before, and in every available corner of the carriage.

The little Marquis, her husband is walking about the deck in a bewildered manner, with a lean daughter on each arm: the carroty-tufted hope of the family is already smoking on the foredeck in a travelling costume checked all over, and in little lacquer-tip pod jean boots, and a shirt embroidered with pink boa-constrictors. 'What is it that gives travelling Snobs such a marvellous propensity to rush into a costume? Why should a man not travel in a coat, &c.? but think proper to dress himself like a harlequin in mourning? See, even young Aldermanbury, the tallow-merchant, who has just stepped on board, has got a travelling-dress gaping all over with pockets; and little Tom Tapeworm, the lawyer's clerk out of the City, who has but three weeks' leave, turns out in gaiters and a bran-new shooting-jacket, and must let the moustaches grow on his little sniffy upper lip, forsooth!

Pompey Hicks is giving elaborate directions to his servant, and asking loudly, 'Davis, where's the dwessing-case?' and 'Davis, you'd best take the pistol-case into the cabin.' Little Pompey travels with a dressing-case, and without a beard: whom he is going to shoot with his pistols, who on earth can tell? and what he is to do with his servant but wait upon him, I am at a loss to conjecture.

Look at honest Nathan Houndsditch and his lady, and their little son. What a noble air of blazing contentment illuminates the features of those Snobs of Eastern race! What a toilette Houndsditch's is! What rings and chains, what gold-headed canes and diamonds, what a tuft the rogue has got to his chin (the rogue! he will never spare himself any cheap enjoyment!) Little Houndsditch has a little cane with a gilt head and little mosaic ornaments--altogether an extra air. As for the lady, she is all the colours of the rainbow! she has a pink parasol, with a white lining, and a yellow bonnet, and an emerald green shawl, and a shot-silk pelisse; and drab boots and rhubarb-coloured gloves; and parti-coloured glass buttons, expanding from the size of a fourpenny-piece to a crown, glitter and twiddle all down the front of her gorgeous costume. I have said before, I like to look at 'the Peoples' on their gala days, they are so picturesquely and outrageously splendid and happy.

Yonder comes Captain Bull; spick and span, tight and trim; who travels for four or six months every year of his life; who does not commit himself by luxury of raiment or insolence of demeanour, but I think is as great a Snob as any man on board. Bull passes the season in London, sponging for dinners, and sleeping in a garret near his Club. Abroad, he has been everywhere; he knows the best wine at every inn in every capital in Europe; lives with the best English company there; has seen every palace and picture-gallery from Madrid to Stockholm; speaks an abominable little jargon of half-a-dozen languages--and knows nothing--nothing. Bull hunts tufts on the Continent, and is a sort of amateur courier. He will scrape acquaintance with old Carabas before they make Ostend; and will remind his lordship that he met him at Vienna twenty years ago, or gave him a glass of Schnapps up the Righi. We have said Bull knows nothing: he knows the birth, arms, and pedigree of all the peerage, has poked his little eyes into every one of the carriages on board--their panels noted and their crests surveyed; he knows all the Continental stories of English scandal--how Count Towrowski ran off with Miss Baggs at Naples--how VERY thick Lady Smigsmag was with young Cornichon of the French Legation at Florence--the exact amount which Jack Deuceace won of Bob Greengoose at Baden--what it is that made the Staggs settle on the Continent: the sum for which the O'Goggarty estates are mortgaged, &c. If he can't catch a lord he will hook on to a baronet, or else the old wretch will catch hold of some beardless young stripling of fashion, and show him 'life' in various and amiable and inaccessible quarters. Faugh! the old brute! If he has every one of the vices of the most boisterous youth, at least he is comforted by having no conscience. He is utterly stupid, but of a jovial turn, He believes himself to be quite a respectable member of society: but perhaps the only good action he ever did in his life is the involuntary one of giving an example to be avoided, and showing what an odious thing in the social picture is that figure of the debauched old man who passes through life rather a decorous Silenus, and dies some day in his garret, alone, unrepenting, and unnoted, save by his astonished heirs, who find that the dissolute old miser has left money behind him. See! he is up to old Carabas already! I told you he would.

Yonder you see the old Lady Mary MacScrew, and those middle-aged young women her daughters; they are going to cheapen and haggle in Belgium and up the Rhine until they meet with a boarding-house where they can live upon less board-wages than her ladyship pays her footmen. But she will exact and receive considerable respect from the British Snobs located in the watering place which she selects for her summer residence, being the daughter of the Earl of Haggistoun. That broad-shouldered buck, with the great whiskers and the cleaned white kid-gloves, is Mr. Phelim Clancy of Poldoodystown: he calls himself Mr. De Clancy; he endeavours to disguise his native brogue with the richest superposition of English; and if you play at billiards or ECARTE with him, the chances are that you will win the first game, and he the seven or eight games ensuing.

That overgrown lady with the four daughters, and the young dandy from the University, her son, is Mrs. Kewsy, the eminent barrister's lady, who would rather die than not be in the fashion. She has the 'Peerage' in her carpet-bag, you may be sure; but she is altogether cut out by Mrs. Quod, the attorney's wife, whose carriage, with the apparatus of rumbles, dickeys, and imperials, scarcely yields in splendour to the Marquis of Carabas's own travelling-chariot, and whose courier has even bigger whiskers and a larger morocco money-bag than the Marquis's own travelling gentleman. Remark her well: she is talking to Mr. Spout, the new Member for Jawborough, who is going out to inspect the operations of the Zollverein, and will put some very severe questions to Lord Palmerston next session upon England and her relations with the Prussian-blue trade, the Naples-soap trade, the German-tinder trade, &c. Spout will patronize King Leopold at Brussels; will write letters from abroad to the JAWBOROUGH INDEPENDENT; and in his quality of MEMBER DU PARLIAMONG BRITANNIQUE, will expect to be invited to a family dinner with every sovereign whose dominions he honours with a visit during his tour.

The next person is--but hark! the bell for shore is ringing, and, shaking Snook's hand cordially, we rush on to the pier, waving him a farewell as the noble black ship cuts keenly through the sunny azure waters, bearing away that cargo of Snobs outward bound.

CHAPTER XXII--CONTINENTAL SNOBBERY CONTINUED

We are accustomed to laugh at the French for their braggadocio propensities, and intolerable vanity about La France, la gloire, l'Empereur, and the like; and yet I think in my heart that the British Snob, for conceit and self-sufficiency and braggartism in his way, is without a parallel. There is always something uneasy in a Frenchman's conceit. He brags with so much fury, shrieking, and gesticulation; yells out so loudly that the Francais is at the head of civilization, the centre of thought, &c.; that one can't but see the poor fellow has a lurking doubt in his own mind that he is not the wonder he professes to be.

About the British Snob, on the contrary, there is commonly no noise, no bluster, but the calmness of profound conviction. We are better than all the world; we don't question the opinion at all; it's an axiom. And when a Frenchman bellows out, 'LA FRANCE, MONSIEUR, LA FRANCE EST A LA TETE DU MONDE CIVILISE!' we laugh good-naturedly at the frantic poor devil. WE are the first chop of the world: we know the fact so well in our secret hearts that a claim set up elsewhere is simply ludicrous. My dear brother reader, say, as a man of honour, if you are not of this opinion? Do you think a Frenchman your equal? You don't--you gallant British Snob--you know you don't: no more, perhaps, does the Snob your humble servant, brother.

And I am inclined to think it is this conviction, and the consequent bearing of the Englishman towards the foreigner whom he condescends to visit, this confidence of superiority which holds up the head of the owner of every English hat-box from Sicily to St. Petersburg, that makes us so magnificently hated throughout Europe as we are; this--more than all our little victories, and of which many Frenchmen and Spaniards have never heard--this amazing and indomitable insular pride, which animates my lord in his travelling-carriage as well as John in the rumble.

If you read the old Chronicles of the French wars, you find precisely the same character of the Englishman, and Henry V.'s people behaved with just the cool domineering manner of our gallant veterans of France and the Peninsula. Did you never hear Colonel Cutler and Major Slasher talking over the war after dinner? or Captain Boarder describing his action with the 'Indomptable?' 'Hang the fellows,' says Boarder, 'their practice was very good. I was beat off three times before I took her.' 'Cuss those carabineers of Milhaud's,' says Slasher, 'what work they made of our light cavalry!' implying a sort of surprise that the Frenchman should stand up against Britons at all: a good-natured wonder that the blind, mad, vain-glorious, brave poor devils should actually have the courage to resist an Englishman. Legions of such Englishmen are patronizing Europe at this moment, being kind to the Pope, or good-natured to the King of Holland, or condescending to inspect the Prussian reviews. When Nicholas came here, who reviews a quarter of a million of pairs of moustaches to his breakfast every morning, we took him off to Windsor and showed him two whole regiments of six or eight hundred Britons a-piece, with an air as much as to say,--'There, my boy, look at THAT. Those are ENGLISHMEN, those are, and your master whenever you please,' as the nursery song says. The British Snob is long, long past scepticism, and can afford to laugh quite good-humouredly at those conceited Yankees, or besotted little Frenchmen, who set up as models of mankind. THEY forsooth!

I have been led into these remarks by listening to an old fellow at the Hotel du Nord, at Boulogne, and who is evidently of the Slasher sort. He came down and seated himself at the breakfast-table, with a surly scowl on his salmon-coloured bloodshot face, strangling in a tight, cross-barred cravat; his linen and his appointments so perfectly stiff and spotless that everybody at once recognized him as a dear countryman. Only our port-wine and other admirable institutions could have produced a figure so insolent, so stupid, so gentleman-like. After a while our attention was called to him by his roaring out, in a voice of plethoric fury, 'O!'

Everybody turned round at the 'O,' conceiving the Colonel to be, as his countenance denoted him, in intense pain; but the waiters knew better, and instead of being alarmed, brought the Colonel the kettle. 'O,' it appears, is the French for hot-water. The Colonel (though he despises it heartily) thinks he speaks the language remarkably well. Whilst he was inhausting his smoking tea, which went rolling and gurgling down his throat, and hissing over the 'hot coppers' of that respectable veteran, a friend joined him, with a wizened face and very black wig, evidently a Colonel too.

The two warriors, waggling their old heads at each other, presently joined breakfast, and fell into conversation, and we had the advantage of hearing about the old war, and some pleasant conjectures as to the next, which they considered imminent. They psha'd the French fleet; they pooh-pooh'd the French commercial marine; they showed how, in a war, there would be a cordon ('a cordong, by---') of steamers along our coast, and 'by ---,' ready at a minute to land anywhere on the other shore, to give the French as good a thrashing as they got in the last war, 'by ---'. In fact, a rumbling cannonade of oaths was fired by the two veterans during the whole of their conversation.

There was a Frenchman in the room, but as he had not been above ten years in London, of course he did not speak the language, and lost the benefit of the conversation. 'But, O my country!' said I to myself, it's no wonder that you are so beloved! If I were a Frenchman, how I would hate you!'

That brutal, ignorant, peevish bully of an Englishman is showing himself in every city of Europe. One of the dullest creatures under heaven, he goes travelling Europe under foot, shouldering his way into galleries and cathedrals, and bustling into palaces with his buck-ram uniform. At church or theatre, gala or picture-gallery, HIS face never varies. A thousand delightful sights pass before his bloodshot eyes, and don't affect him. Countless brilliant scenes of life and manners are shown him, but never move him. He goes to church, and calls the practices there degrading and superstitious: as if HIS altar was the only one that was acceptable. He goes to picture-galleries, and is more ignorant about Art than a French shoeblack. Art, Nature pass, and there is no dot of admiration in his stupid eyes: nothing moves him, except when a very great man comes his way, and then the rigid, proud, self-confident, inflexible British Snob can be as humble as a flunkey and as supple as a harlequin.

CHAPTER XXIII--ENGLISH SNOBS ON THE CONTINENT

'WHAT is the use of Lord Rome's telescope?' my friend Panwiski exclaimed the other day. 'It only enables you to see a few hundred thousands of miles farther. What were thought to be mere nebulae, turn out to be most perceivable starry systems; and beyond these, you see other nebulae, which a more powerful glass will show to be stars, again; and so they go on glittering and winking away into eternity.' With which my friend Pan, heaving a great sigh, as if confessing his inability to look Infinity in the face, sank back resigned, and swallowed a large bumper of claret.

I (who, like other great men, have but one idea), thought to myself, that as the stars are, so are the Snobs:--the more you gaze upon those luminaries, the more you behold--now nebulously congregated--now faintly distinguishable--now brightly defined--until they twinkle off in endless blazes, and fade into the immeasurable darkness. I am but as a child playing on the sea-shore. Some telescopic philosopher will arise one day, some great Snobonomer, to find the laws of the great science which we are now merely playing with, and to define, and settle, and classify that which is at present but vague theory, and loose though elegant assertion.

Yes: a single eye can but trace a very few and simple varieties of the enormous universe of Snobs. I sometimes think of appealing to the public, and calling together a congress of SAVANS, such as met at Southampton--each to bring his contributions and read his paper on the Great Subject. For what can a single poor few do, even with the subject at present in hand? English Snobs on the Continent--though they are a hundred thousand times less numerous than on their native island, yet even these few are too many. One can only fix a stray one here and there. The individuals are caught--the thousands escape. I have noted down but three whom I have met with in my walk this morning through this pleasant marine city of Boulogne.

There is the English Raff Snob, that frequents ESTAMINETS and CABARETS; who is heard yelling, 'We won't go home till morning!' and startling the midnight echoes of quiet Continental towns with shrieks of English slang. The boozy unshorn wretch is seen hovering round quays as packets arrive, and tippling drains in inn bars where he gets credit. He talks French with slang familiarity: he and his like quite people the debt-prisons on the Continent. He plays pool at the billiard-houses, and may be seen engaged at cards and dominoes of forenoons. His signature is to be seen on countless bills of exchange: it belonged to an honourable family once, very likely; for the English Raff most probably began by being a gentleman, and has a father over the water who is ashamed to hear his name. He has cheated the old 'governor' repeatedly in better days, and swindled his sisters of their portions, and robbed his younger brothers. Now he is living on his wife's jointure: she is hidden away in some dismal garret, patching shabby finery and cobbling up old clothes for her children--the most miserable and slatternly of women.

Or sometimes the poor woman and her daughters go about timidly, giving lessons in English and music, or do embroidery and work under-hand, to purchase the means for the POT-AU-FEU; while Raff is swaggering on the quay, or tossing off glasses of cognac at the CAF. The unfortunate creature has a child still every year, and her constant hypocrisy is to try and make her girls believe that their father is a respectable man, and to huddle him out of the way when the brute comes home drunk.

Those poor ruined souls get together and have a society of their own, the which it is very affecting to watch--those tawdry pretences at gentility, those flimsy attempts at gaiety: those woful sallies: that jingling old piano; oh, it makes the heart sick to see and hear them. As Mrs. Raff, with her company of pale daughters, gives a penny tea to Mrs. Diddler, they talk about bygone times and the fine society they kept; and they sing feeble songs out of tattered old music-books; and while engaged in this sort of entertainment, in comes Captain Raff with his greasy hat on one side, and straightway the whole of the dismal room reeks with a mingled odour of smoke and spirits.

Has not everybody who has lived abroad met Captain Raff? His name is proclaimed, every now and then, by Mr. Sheriff's Officer Hemp; and about Boulogne, and Paris, and Brussels, there are so many of his sort that I will lay a wager that I shall be accused of gross personality for showing him up. Many a less irreclaimable villain is transported; many a more honourable man is at present at the treadmill; and although we are the noblest, greatest, most religious, and most moral people in the world, I would still like to know where, except in the United Kingdom, debts are a matter of joke, and making tradesmen 'suffer' a sport that gentlemen own to? It is dishonourable to owe money in France. You never hear people in other parts of Europe brag of their swindling; or see a prison in a large Continental town which is not more or less peopled with English rogues.

A still more loathsome and dangerous Snob than the above transparent and passive scamp, is frequent on the continent of Europe, and my young Snob friends who are travelling thither should be especially warned against him. Captain Legg is a gentleman, like Raff, though perhaps of a better degree. He has robbed his family too, but of a great deal more, and has boldly dishonoured bills for thousands, where Raff has been boggling over the clumsy conveyance of a ten-pound note. Legg is always at the best inn, with the finest waistcoats and moustaches, or tearing about in the flashest of britzkas, while poor Raff is tipsifying himself with spirits, and smoking cheap tobacco. It is amazing to think that Legg, so often shown up, and known everywhere, is flourishing yet. He would sink into utter ruin, but for the constant and ardent love of gentility that distinguishes the English Snob. There is many a young fellow of the middle classes who must know Legg to be a rogue and a cheat; and yet from his desire to be in the fashion, and his admiration of tip-top swells, and from his ambition to air himself by the side of a Lord's son, will let Legg make an income out of him; content to pay, so long as he can enjoy that society. Many a worthy father of a family, when he hears that his son is riding about with Captain Legg, Lord Levant's son, is rather pleased that young Hopeful should be in such good company.

Legg and his friend, Major Macer, make professional tours through Europe, and are to be found at the right places at the right time. Last year I heard how my young acquaintance, Mr. Muff, from Oxford, going to see a little life at a Carnival ball at Paris, was accosted by an Englishman who did not know a word of the d----language, and hearing Muff speak it so admirably, begged him to interpret to a waiter with whom there was a dispute about refreshments. It was quite a comfort, the stranger said, to see an honest English face; and did Muff know where there was a good place for supper? So those two went to supper, and who should come in, of all men in the world, but Major Macer? And so Legg introduced Macer, and so there came on a little intimacy, and three-card loo, &c. &c.. Year after year scores of Muffs, in various places in the world, are victimised by Legg and Macer. The story is so stale, the trick of seduction so entirely old and clumsy, that it is only a wonder people can be taken in any more: but the temptations of vice and gentility together are too much for young English Snobs, and those simple young victims are caught fresh every day. Though it is only to be kicked and cheated by men of fashion, your true British Snob will present himself for the honour.

I need not allude here to that very common British Snob, who makes desperate efforts at becoming intimate with the great Continental aristocracy, such as old Rolls, the baker, who has set up his quarters in the Faubourg Saint Germain, and will receive none but Carlists, and no French gentleman under the rank of a Marquis. We can all of us laugh at THAT fellow's pretensions well enough--we who tremble before a great man of our own nation. But, as you say, my brave and honest John Bull of a Snob, a French Marquis of twenty descents is very different from an English Peer; and a pack of beggarly German and Italian Fuersten and Principi awaken the scorn of an honest-minded Briton. But our aristocracy!--that's a very different matter. They are the real leaders of the world--the real old original and-no-mistake nobility.

Off with your cap, Snob; down on your knees, Snob, and truckle.

CHAPTER XXIV--ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

Tired of the town, where the sight of the closed shutters of the nobility, my friends, makes my heart sick in my walks; afraid almost to sit in those vast Pall Mall solitudes, the Clubs, and of annoying the Club waiters, who might, I thought, be going to shoot in the country, but for me, I determined on a brief tour in the provinces, and paying some visits in the country which were long due.

My first visit was to my friend Major Ponto (H.P. of the Horse Marines), in Mangelwurzelshire. The Major, in his little phaeton, was in waiting to take me up at the station. The vehicle was not certainly splendid, but such a carriage as would accommodate a plain man (as Ponto said he was) and a numerous family. We drove by beautiful fresh fields and green hedges, through a cheerful English landscape; the high-road, as smooth and trim as the way in a nobleman's park, was charmingly chequered with cool shade and golden sunshine. Rustics in snowy smock-frocks jerked their hats off smiling as we passed. Children, with cheeks as red as the apples in the orchards, bobbed curtsies to us at the cottage-doors. Blue church spires rose here and there in the distance: and as the buxom gardener's wife opened the white gate at the Major's little ivy-covered lodge, and we drove through the neat plantations of firs and evergreens, up to the house, my bosom felt a joy and elation which I thought it was impossible to experience in the smoky atmosphere of a town. 'Here,' I mentally exclaimed, 'is all peace, plenty, happiness. Here, I shall be rid of Snobs. There can be none in this charming Arcadian spot.'

Stripes, the Major's man (formerly corporal in his gallant corps), received my portmanteau, and an elegant little present, which I had brought from town as a peace-offering to Mrs. Ponto; viz., a cod and oysters from Grove's, in a hamper about the size of a coffin.

Ponto's house ('The Evergreens' Mrs. P. has christened it) is a perfect Paradise of a place. It is all over creepers, and bow-windows, and verandahs. A wavy lawn tumbles up and down all round it, with flower-beds of wonderful shapes, and zigzag gravel walks, and beautiful but damp shrubberies of myrtles and glistening laurustines, which have procured it its change of name. It was called Little Bullock's Pound in old Doctor Ponto's time. I had a view of the pretty grounds, and the stable, and the adjoining village and church, and a great park beyond, from the windows of the bedroom whither Ponto conducted me. It was the yellow bedroom, the freshest and pleasantest of bed-chambers; the air was fragrant with a large bouquet that was placed on the writing-table; the linen was fragrant with the lavender in which it had been laid; the chintz hangings of the bed and the big sofa were, if not fragrant with flowers, at least painted all over with them; the pen-wiper on the table was the imitation of a double dahlia; and there was accommodation for my watch in a sun-flower on the mantelpiece. A scarlet-leaved creeper came curling over the windows, through which the setting sun was pouring a flood of golden light. It was all flowers and freshness. Oh, how unlike those black chimney-pots in St. Alban's Place, London, on which these weary eyes are accustomed to look.

'It must be all happiness here, Ponto,' said I, flinging myself down into the snug BERGERE, and inhaling such a delicious draught of country air as all the MILLEFLEURS of Mr. Atkinson's shop cannot impart to any the most expensive pocket-handkerchief.

'Nice place, isn't it?' said Ponto. 'Quiet and unpretending. I like everything quiet. You've not brought your valet with you? Stripes will arrange your dressing things;' and that functionary, entering at the same time, proceeded to gut my portmanteau, and to lay out the black kerseymeres, 'the rich cut velvet Genoa waistcoat,' the white choker, and other polite articles of evening costume, with great gravity and despatch. 'A great dinner-party,' thinks I to myself, seeing these preparations (and not, perhaps, displeased at the idea that some of the best people in the neighbourhood were coming to see me). 'Hark, theres the first bell ringing! 'said Ponto, moving away; and, in fact, a clamorous harbinger of victuals began clanging from the stable turret, and announced the agreeable fact that dinner would appear in half-an-hour. 'If the dinner is as grand as the dinner-bell,' thought I, 'faith, I'm in good quarters!' and had leisure, during the half-hour's interval, not only to advance my own person to the utmost polish of elegance which it is capable of receiving, to admire the pedigree of the Pontos hanging over the chimney, and the Ponto crest and arms emblazoned on the wash-hand basin and jug, but to make a thousand reflections on the happiness of a country life--upon the innocent friendliness and cordiality of rustic intercourse; and to sigh for an opportunity of retiring, like Ponto, to my own fields, to my own vine and fig-tree, with a placens uxor in my domus, and a half-score of sweet young pledges of affection sporting round my paternal knee.

Clang! At the end of thirty minutes, dinner-bell number two pealed from the adjacent turret. I hastened downstairs, expecting to find a score of healthy country folk in the drawing-room. There was only one person there; a tall and Roman-nosed lady, glistering over with bugles, in deep mourning. She rose, advanced two steps, made a majestic curtsey, during which all the bugles in her awful head-dress began to twiddle and quiver--and then said, 'Mr. Snob, we are very happy to see you at the Evergreens,' and heaved a great sigh.

This, then, was Mrs. Major Ponto; to whom making my very best bow, I replied, that I was very proud to make her acquaintance, as also that of so charming a place as the Evergreens.

Another sigh. 'We are distantly related, Mr. Snob,' said she, shaking her melancholy head. 'Poor dear Lord Rubadub!'

'Oh!' said I; not knowing what the deuce Mrs. Major Ponto meant.

'Major Ponto told me that you were of the Leicestershire Snobs: a very old family, and related to Lord Snobbington, who married Laura Rubadub, who is a cousin of mine, as was her poor dear father, for whom we are mourning. What a seizure! only sixty-three, and apoplexy quite unknown until now in our family! In life we are in death, Mr. Snob. Does Lady Snobbington bear the deprivation well?'

'Why, really, ma'am, I--I don't know,' I replied, more and more confused.

As she was speaking I heard a sort of CLOOP, by which well-known sound I was aware that somebody was opening a bottle of wine, and Ponto entered, in a huge white neckcloth, and a rather shabby black suit.

'My love,' Mrs. Major Ponto said to her husband, 'we were talking of our cousin--poor dear Lord Rubadub. His death has placed some of the first families in England in mourning. Does Lady Rubadub keep the house in Hill Street, do you know?'

I didn't know, but I said, 'I believe she does,' at a venture; and, looking down to the drawing-room table, saw the inevitable, abominable, maniacal, absurd, disgusting 'Peerage' open on the table, interleaved with annotations, and open at the article 'Snobbington.'

'Dinner is served,' says Stripes, flinging open the door; and I gave Mrs. Major Ponto my arm.

CHAPTER XXV--A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

Of the dinner to which we now sat down, I am not going to be a severe critic. The mahogany I hold to be inviolable; but this I will say, that I prefer sherry to marsala when I can get it, and the latter was the wine of which I have no doubt I heard the 'cloop' just before dinner. Nor was it particularly good of its kind; however, Mrs. Major Ponto did not evidently know the difference, for she called the liquor Amontillado during the whole of the repast, and drank but half a glass of it, leaving the rest for the Major and his guest.

Stripes was in the livery of the Ponto family--a thought shabby, but gorgeous in the extreme--lots of magnificent worsted lace, and livery buttons of a very notable size. The honest fellow's hands, I remarked, were very large and black; and a fine odour of the stable was wafted about the room as he moved to and fro in his ministration. I should have preferred a clean maidservant, but the sensations of Londoners are too acute perhaps on these subjects; and a faithful John, after all, IS more genteel.

From the circumstance of the dinner being composed of pig's-head mock-turtle soup, of pig's fry and roast ribs of pork, I am led to imagine that one of Ponto's black Hampshires had been sacrificed a short time previous to my visit. It was an excellent and comfortable repast; only there WAS rather a sameness in it, certainly. I made a similar remark the next day'.

During the dinner Mrs. Ponto asked me many questions regarding the nobility, my relatives. 'When Lady Angelina Skeggs would come out; and if the countess her mamma' (this was said with much archness and he-he-ing) 'still wore that extraordinary purple hair-dye?' 'Whether my Lord Guttlebury kept, besides his French chef, and an English cordonbleu for the roasts, an Italian for the confectionery?'

'Who attended at Lady Clapperclaw's conversazioni?' and 'whether Sir John Champignon's "Thursday Mornings" were pleasant?' 'Was it true that Lady Carabas, wanting to pawn her diamonds, found that they were paste, and that the Marquis had disposed of them beforehand?' 'How was it that Snuffin, the great tobacco-merchant, broke off the marriage which was on the tapis between him and their second daughter; and was it true that a mulatto lady came over from the Havanna and forbade the match?'

'Upon my word, Madam,' I had begun, and was going on to say that I didn't know one word about all these matters which seemed so to interest Mrs. Major Ponto, when the Major, giving me a tread or stamp with his large foot under the table, said--'Come, come, Snob my boy, we are all tiled, you know. We KNOW you're one of the fashionable people about town: we saw your name at Lady Clapperclaw's SOIREES, and the Champignon breakfasts; and as for the Rubadubs, of course, as relations ---'

'Oh, of course, I dine there twice a-week,' I said; and then I remembered that my cousin, Humphry Snob, of the Middle Temple, IS a great frequenter of genteel societies, and to have seen his name in the MORNING POST at the tag-end of several party lists. So, taking the hint, I am ashamed to say I indulged Mrs. Major Ponto with a deal of information about the first families in England, such as would astonish those great personages if they knew it. I described to her most accurately the three reigning beauties of last season at Almack's: told her in confidence that his Grace the D--- of W--- was going to be married the day after his Statue was put up; that his Grace the D--- of D--- was also about to lead the fourth daughter of the Archduke Stephen to the hymeneal altar:--and talked to her, in a word, just in the style of Mrs. Gore's last fashionable novel.

Mrs. Major was quite fascinated by this brilliant conversation. She began to trot out scraps of French, just for all the world as they do in the novels; and kissed her hand to me quite graciously, telling me to come soon to caffy, UNG PU DE MUSICK O SALONG--with which she tripped off like an elderly fairy.

'Shall I open a bottle of port, or do you ever drink such a thing as Hollands and water?' says Ponto, looking ruefully at me. This was a very different style of thing to what I had been led to expect from him at our smoking-room at the Club: where he swaggers about his horses and his cellar: and slapping me on the shoulder used to say, 'Come down to Mangelwurzelshire, Snob my boy, and I'll give you as good a day's shooting and as good a glass of claret as any in the county.'--'Well,' I said, 'I like Hollands much better than port, and gin even better than Hollands.' This was lucky. It WAS gin; and Stripes brought in hot water on a splendid plated tray.

The jingling of a harp and piano soon announced that Mrs. Ponto's ung PU DE MUSICK had commenced, and the smell of the stable again entering the dining-room, in the person of Stripes, summoned us to CAFFY and the little concert. She beckoned me with a winning smile to the sofa, on which she made room for me, and where we could command a fine view of the backs of the young ladies who were performing the musical entertainment. Very broad backs they were too, strictly according to the present mode, for crinoline or its substitutes is not an expensive luxury, and young people in the country can afford to be in the fashion at very trifling charges. Miss Emily Ponto at the piano, and her sister Maria at that somewhat exploded instrument, the harp, were in light blue dresses that looked all flounce, and spread out like Mr. Green's balloon when inflated.

'Brilliant touch Emily has--what a fine arm Maria's is,' Mrs. Ponto remarked good-naturedly, pointing out the merits of her daughters, and waving her own arm in such a way as to show that she was not a little satisfied with the beauty of that member. I observed she had about nine bracelets and bangles, consisting of chains and padlocks, the Major's miniature, and a variety of brass serpents with fiery ruby or tender turquoise eyes, writhing up to her elbow almost, in the most profuse contortions.

'You recognize those polkas? They were played at Devonshire House on the 23rd of July, the day of the grand fte.' So I said yes--I knew 'em quite intimately; and began wagging my head as if in acknowledgment of those old friends.

When the performance was concluded, I had the felicity of a presentation and conversation with the two tall and scraggy Miss Pontos; and Miss Wirt, the governess, sat down to entertain us with variations on 'Sich a gettin' up Stairs.' They were determined to be in the fashion.

For the performance of the 'Gettin' up Stairs,' I have no other name but that it was a STUNNER. First Miss Wirt, with great deliberation, played the original and beautiful melody, cutting it, as it were, out of the instrument, and firing off each note so loud, clear, and sharp, that I am sure Stripes must have heard it in the stable.

'What a finger!' says Mrs. Ponto; and indeed it WAS a finger, as knotted as a turkey's drumstick, and splaying all over the piano. When she had banged out the tune slowly, she began a different manner of 'Gettin' up Stairs,' and did so with a fury and swiftness quite incredible. She spun up stairs; she whirled up stairs: she galloped up stairs; she rattled up stairs; and then having got the tune to the top landing, as it were, she hurled it down again shrieking to the bottom floor, where it sank in a crash as if exhausted by the breathless rapidity of the descent. Then Miss Wirt played the 'Gettin' up Stairs' with the most pathetic and ravishing solemnity: plaintive moans and sobs issued from the keys--you wept and trembled as you were gettin' up stairs. Miss Wirt's hands seemed to faint and wail and die in variations: again, and she went up with a savage clang and rush of trumpets, as if Miss Wirt was storming a breach; and although I knew nothing of music, as I sat and listened with my mouth open to this wonderful display, my CAFFY grew cold, and I wondered the windows did not crack and the chandelier start out of the beam at the sound of this earthquake of a piece of music.

'Glorious creature! Isn't she?' said Mrs. Ponto. 'Squirtz's favourite pupil--inestimable to have such a creature. Lady Carabas would give her eyes for her! A prodigy of accomplishments! Thank you, Miss Wirt'--and the young ladies gave a heave and a gasp of admiration--a deep-breathing gushing sound, such as you hear at church when the sermon comes to a full stop.

Miss Wirt put her two great double-knuckled hands round a waist of her two pupils, and said, 'My dear children, I hope you will be able to play it soon as well as your poor little governess. When I lived with the Dunsinanes, it was the dear Duchess's favourite, and Lady Barbara and Lady Jane McBeth learned it. It was while hearing Jane play that, I remember, that dear Lord Castletoddy first fell in love with her; and though he is but an Irish Peer, with not more than fifteen thousand a year, I persuaded Jane to have him. Do you know Castletoddy, Mr. Snob?--round towers--sweet place-County Mayo. Old Lord Castletoddy (the present Lord was then Lord Inishowan) was a most eccentric old man--they say he was mad. I heard his Royal Highness the poor dear Duke of Sussex--(SUCH a man, my dears, but alas! addicted to smoking!)--I heard his Royal Highness say to the Marquis of Anglesey, "I am sure Castletoddy is mad!" but Inishowan wasn't in marrying my sweet Jane, though the dear child had but her ten thousand pounds POUR TOUT POTAGE!'

'Most invaluable person,' whispered Mrs. Major Ponto to me. 'Has lived in the very highest society:' and I, who have been accustomed to see governesses bullied in the world, was delighted to find this one ruling the roast, and to think that even the majestic Mrs. Ponto bent before her.

As for my pipe, so to speak, it went out at once. I hadn't a word to say against a woman who was intimate with every Duchess in the Red Book. She wasn't the rosebud, but she had been near it. She had rubbed shoulders with the great, and about these we talked all the evening incessantly, and about the fashions, and about the Court, until bed-time came.

'And are there Snobs in this Elysium?' I exclaimed, jumping into the lavender-perfumed bed. Ponto's snoring boomed from the neighbouring bed-room in reply.

CHAPTER XXVI--ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

Something like a journal of the proceedings at the Evergreens may be interesting to those foreign readers of PUNCH who want to know the customs of an English gentleman's family and household. There's plenty of time to keep the Journal. Piano-strumming begins at six o'clock in the morning; it lasts till breakfast, with but a minute's intermission, when the instrument changes hands, and Miss Emily practises in place of her sister Miss Maria.

In fact, the confounded instrument never stops when the young ladies are at their lessons, Miss Wirt hammers away at those stunning variations, and keeps her magnificent finger in exercise.

I asked this great creature in what other branches of education she instructed her pupils? 'The modern languages,' says she modestly: 'French, German, Spanish, and Italian, Latin and the rudiments of Greek if desired. English of course; the practice of Elocution, Geography, and Astronomy, and the Use of the Globes, Algebra (but only as far as quadratic equations); for a poor ignorant female, you know, Mr. Snob, cannot be expected to know everything. Ancient and Modern History no young woman can be without; and of these I make my beloved pupils PERFECT MISTRESSES. Botany, Geology, and Mineralogy, I consider as amusements. And with these I assure you we manage to pass the days at the Evergreens not unpleasantly.'

Only these, thought I--what an education! But I looked in one of Miss Ponto's manuscript song-books and found five faults of French in four words; and in a waggish mood asking Miss Wirt whether Dante Algiery was so called because he was born at Algiers, received a smiling answer in the affirmative, which made me rather doubt about the accuracy of Miss Wirt's knowledge.

When the above little morning occupations are concluded, these unfortunate young women perform what they call Calisthenic Exercises in the garden. I saw them to-day, without any crinoline, pulling the garden-roller.

Dear Mrs. Ponto was in the garden too, and as limp as her daughters; in a faded bandeau of hair, in a battered bonnet, in a holland pinafore, in pattens, on a broken chair, snipping leaves off a vine. Mrs. Ponto measures many yards about in an evening. Ye heavens! what a guy she is in that skeleton morning-costume!

Besides Stripes, they keep a boy called Thomas or Tummus. Tummus works in the garden or about the pigsty and stable; Thomas wears a page's costume of eruptive buttons.

When anybody calls, and Stripes is out of the way, Tummus flings himself like mad into Thomas's clothes, and comes out metamorphosed like Harlequin in the pantomime. To-day, as Mrs. P. was cutting the grapevine, as the young ladies were at the roller, down comes Tummus like a roaring whirlwind, with 'Missus, Missus, there's company coomin'!' Away skurry the young ladies from the roller, down comes Mrs. P. from the old chair, off flies Tummus to change his clothes, and in an incredibly short space of time Sir John Hawbuck, my Lady Hawbuck, and Master Hugh Hawbuck are introduced into the garden with brazen effrontery by Thomas, who says, 'Please Sir Jan and my Lady to walk this year way: I KNOW Missus is in the rose-garden.'

And there, sure enough, she was!

In a pretty little garden bonnet, with beautiful curling ringlets, with the smartest of aprons and the freshest of pearl-coloured gloves, this amazing woman was in the arms of her dearest Lady Hawbuck. 'Dearest Lady Hawbuck, how good of you! Always among my flowers! can't live away from them!'

'Sweets to the sweet! hum--a-ha--haw!' says Sir John Hawbuck, who piques himself on his gallantry, and says nothing without 'a-hum--a-ha--a-haw!'

'Whereth yaw pinnafaw?' cries Master Hugh. 'WE thaw you in it, over the wall, didn't we, Pa?'

'Hum--a-ha--a-haw!' burst out Sir John, dreadfully alarmed. 'Where's Ponto? Why wasn't he at Quarter Sessions? How are his birds this year, Mrs. Ponto--have those Carabas pheasants done any harm to your wheat? a-hum--a-ha--a-haw!' and all this while he was making the most ferocious and desperate signals to his youthful heir.

'Well, she WATH in her pinnafaw, wathn't she, Ma?' says Hugh, quite unabashed; which question Lady Hawbuck turned away with a sudden query regarding her dear darling daughters, and the ENFANT TERRIBLE was removed by his father.

'I hope you weren't disturbed by the music?' Ponto says. 'My girls, you know, practise four hours a day, you know--must do it, you know--absolutely necessary. As for me, you know I'm an early man, and in my farm every morning at five--no, no laziness for ME.'

The facts are these. Ponto goes to sleep directly after dinner on entering the drawing-room, and wakes up when the ladies leave off practice at ten. From seven till ten, from ten till five, is a very fair allowance of slumber for a man who says he's NOT a lazy man. It is my private opinion that when Ponto retires to what is called his 'Study,' he sleeps too. He locks himself up there daily two hours with the newspaper.

I saw the HAWBUCK scene out of the Study, which commands the garden. It's a curious object, that Study. Ponto's library mostly consists of boots. He and Stripes have important interviews here of mornings, when the potatoes are discussed, or the fate of the calf ordained, or sentence passed on the pig, &c.. All the Major's bills are docketed on the Study table and displayed like a lawyer's briefs. Here, too, lie displayed his hooks, knives, and other gardening irons, his whistles, and strings of spare buttons. He has a drawer of endless brown paper for parcels, and another containing a prodigious and never-failing supply of string. What a man can want with so many gig-whips I can never conceive. These, and fishing-rods, and landing-nets, and spurs, and boot-trees, and balls for horses, and surgical implements for the same, and favourite pots of shiny blacking, with which he paints his own shoes in the most elegant manner, and buckskin gloves stretched out on their trees, and his gorget, sash, and sabre of the Horse Marines, with his boot-hooks underneath in atrophy; and the family medicine-chest, and in a corner the very rod with which he used to whip his son, Wellesley Ponto, when a boy (Wellesley never entered the 'Study' but for that awful purpose)--all these, with 'Mogg's Road Book,' the GARDENERS' CHRONICLE, and a backgammon-board, form the Major's library. Under the trophy there's a picture of Mrs. Ponto, in a light blue dress and train, and no waist, when she was first married; a fox's brush lies over the frame, and serves to keep the dust off that work of art.

'My library's small, says Ponto, with the most amazing impudence, 'but well selected, my boy--well selected. I have been reading the "History of England" all the morning.'

CHAPTER XXVII--A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

We had the fish, which, as the kind reader may remember, I had brought down in a delicate attention to Mrs. Ponto, to variegate the repast of next day; and cod and oyster-sauce, twice laid, salt cod and scolloped oysters, formed parts of the bill of fare until I began to fancy that the Ponto family, like our late revered monarch George II., had a fancy for stale fish. And about this time, the pig being consumed, we began upon a sheep.

But how shall I forget the solemn splendour of a second course, which was served up in great state by Stripes in a silver dish and cove; a napkin round his dirty thumbs; and consisted of a landrail, not much bigger than a corpulent sparrow.

'My love, will you take any game?' says Ponto, with prodigious gravity; and stuck his fork into that little mouthful of an island in the silver sea. Stripes, too, at intervals, dribbled out the Marsala with a solemnity which would have done honour to a Duke's butler. The Bamnecide's dinner to Shacabac was only one degree removed from these solemn banquets.

As there were plenty of pretty country places close by; a comfortable country town, with good houses of gentlefolks; a beautiful old parsonage, close to the church whither we went (and where the Carabas family have their ancestral carved and monumented Gothic pew), and every appearance of good society in the neighbourhood, I rather wondered we were not enlivened by the appearance of some of the neighbours at the Evergreens, and asked about them.

'We can't in our position of life--we can't well associate with the attorney's family, as I leave you to suppose,' says Mrs. Ponto, confidentially. 'Of course not,' I answered, though I didn't know why. 'And the Doctor?' said I.

'A most excellent worthy creature,' says Mrs. P. saved Maria's life--really a learned man; but what can one do in one's position? One may ask one's medical man to one's table certainly: but his family, my dear Mr. Snob!'

'Half-a-dozen little gallipots,' interposed Miss Wirt, the governess: 'he, he, he!' and the young ladies laughed in chorus.

'We only live with the county families,' Miss Wirt (1) continued, tossing up her head. 'The Duke is abroad: we are at feud with the Carabases; the Ringwoods don't come down till Christmas: in fact, nobody's here till the hunting season--positively nobody.'

'Whose is the large red house just outside of the town?'

'What! the CHATEAU-CALICOT? he, he, he! That purse-proud ex-linendraper, Mr. Yardley, with the yellow liveries, and the wife in red velvet? How CAN you, my dear Mr. Snob, be so satirical? The impertinence of those people is really something quite overwhelming.'

'Well, then, there is the parson, Doctor Chrysostom. He's a gentleman, at any rate.' At this Mrs. Ponto looked at Miss Wirt. After their eyes had met and they had wagged their heads at each other. They looked up to the ceiling. So did the young ladies. They thrilled. It was evident I had said something terrible. Another black sheep in the Church? thought I with a little sorrow; for I don't care to own that I have a respect for the cloth. 'I--hope there's nothing wrong?

'Wrong?' says Mrs. P., clasping her hands with a tragic air.

'Oh!' says Miss Wirt, and the two girls, gasping in chorus.

'Well,' says I, 'I'm very sorry for it. I never saw a nicer-looking old gentleman, or a better school, or heard a better sermon.'

'He used to preach those sermons in a surplice,' hissed out Mrs. Ponto. 'He's a Puseyite, Mr. Snob.'

'Heavenly powers!' says I, admiring the pure ardour of these female theologians; and Stripes came in with the tea. It's so weak that no wonder Ponto's sleep isn't disturbed by it.

Of mornings we used to go out shooting. We had Ponto's own fields to sport over (where we got the landrail), and the non-preserved part of the Hawbuck property: and one evening in a stubble of Ponto's skirting the Carabas woods, we got among some pheasants, and had some real sport. I shot a hen, I know, greatly to my delight. 'Bag it,' says Ponto, in rather a hurried manner: 'here's somebody coming.' So I pocketed the bird.

'You infernal poaching thieves!' roars out a man from the hedge in the garb of a gamekeeper. 'I wish I could catch you on this side of the hedge. I'd put a brace of barrels into you, that I would.'

'Curse that Snapper,' says Ponto, moving off; 'he's always watching me like a spy.'

'Carry off the birds, you sneaks, and sell 'em in London,' roars the individual, who it appears was a keeper of Lord Carabas. 'You'll get six shillings a brace for 'em.'

'YOU know the price of 'em well enough, and so does your master too, you scoundrel,' says Ponto, still retreating.

'We kill 'em on our ground,' cries Mr. Snapper. 'WE don't set traps for other people's birds. We're no decoy ducks. We're no sneaking poachers. We don't shoot 'ens, like that 'ere Cockney, who's got the tail of one a-sticking out of his pocket. Only just come across the hedge, that's all.'

'I tell you what,' says Stripes, who was out with us as keeper this day, (in fact he's keeper, coachman, gardener, valet, and bailiff, with Tummus under him,) 'if YOU'LL come across, John Snapper, and take your coat off, I'll give you such a whopping as you've never had since the last time I did it at Guttlebury Fair.'

'Whop one of your own weight,' Mr. Snapper said, whistling his dogs and disappearing into the wood. And so we came out of this controversy rather victoriously; but I began to alter my preconceived ideas of rural felicity.

Notes.

(1) I have since heard that this aristocratic lady's father was a livery-button maker in St. Martin's Lane: where he met with misfortunes, and his daughter acquired her taste for heraldry. But it may be told to her credit, that out of her earnings she has kept the bed-ridden old bankrupt in great comfort and secrecy at Pentonville; and furnished her brother's outfit for the Cadetship which her patron, Lord Swigglebiggle, gave her when he was at the Board of Control. I have this information from a friend. To hear Miss Wirt herself, you would fancy that her Papa was a Rothschild, and that the markets of Europe were convulsed when he went into the GAZETTE.

CHAPTER XXVIII--ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

'Be hanged to your aristocrats!' Ponto said, in some conversation we had regarding the family at Carabas, between whom and the Evergreens there was a feud. 'When I first came into the county--it was the year before Sir John Buff contested in the Blue interest--the Marquis, then Lord St. Michaels, who, of course, was Orange to the core, paid me and Mrs. Ponto such attentions, that I fairly confess I was taken in by the old humbug, and thought that I'd met with a rare neighbour. 'Gad, Sir, we used to get pines from Carabas, and pheasants from Carabas, and it was--"Ponto, when will you come over and shoot?"--and--"Ponto, our pheasants want thinning,"--and my Lady would insist upon her dear Mrs. Ponto coming over to Carabas to sleep, and put me I don't know to what expense for turbans and velvet gowns for my wife's toilette. Well, Sir, the election takes place, and though I was always a Liberal, personal friendship of course induces me to plump for St. Michaels, who comes in at the head of the poll. Next year, Mrs. P. insists upon going to town--with lodgings in Clarges Street at ten pounds a week, with a hired brougham, and new dresses for herself and the girls, and the deuce and all to pay. Our first cards were to Carabas House; my Lady's are returned by a great big flunkey; and I leave you to fancy my poor Betsy's discomfiture as the lodging-house maid took in the cards, and Lady St. Michaels drives away, though she actually saw us at the drawing-room window. Would you believe it, Sir, that though we called four times afterwards, those infernal aristocrats never returned our visit; that though Lady St. Michaels gave nine dinner-parties and four DEJEUNERS that season, she never asked us to one; and that she cut us dead at the Opera, though Betsy was nodding to her the whole night? We wrote to her for tickets for Almack's; she writes to say that all hers were promised; and said, in the presence of Wiggins, her lady's-maid, who told it to Diggs, my wife's woman, that she couldn't conceive how people in our station of life could so far forget themselves as to wish to appear in any such place! Go to Castle Carabas! I'd sooner die than set my foot in the house of that impertinent, insolvent, insolent jackanapes--and I hold him in scorn!' After this, Ponto gave me some private information regarding Lord Carabas's pecuniary affairs; how he owed money all over the county; how Jukes the carpenter was utterly ruined and couldn't get a shilling of his bill; how Biggs the butcher hanged himself for the same reason; how the six big footmen never received a guinea of wages, and Snaffle, the state coachman, actually took off his blown-glass wig of ceremony and flung it at Lady Carabas's feet on the terrace before the Castle; all which stories, as they are private, I do not think proper to divulge. But these details did not stifle my desire to see the famous mansion of Castle Carabas, nay, possibly excited my interest to know more about that lordly house and its owners.

At the entrance of the park, there are a pair of great gaunt mildewed lodges--mouldy Doric temples with black chimney-pots, in the finest classic taste, and the gates of course are surmounted by the CHATS BOTTES, the well-known supporters of the Carabas family. 'Give the lodge-keeper a shilling,' says Ponto, (who drove me near to it in his four-wheeled cruelty-chaise). 'I warrant it's the first piece of ready money he has received for some time. I don't know whether there was any foundation for this sneer, but the gratuity was received with a curtsey, and the gate opened for me to enter. 'Poor old porteress!' says I, inwardly. 'You little know that it is the Historian of Snobs whom you let in!' The gates were passed. A damp green stretch of park spread right and left immeasurably, confined by a chilly grey wall, and a damp long straight road between two huge rows of moist, dismal lime-trees, leads up to the Castle. In the midst of the park is a great black tank or lake, bristling over with rushes, and here and there covered over with patches of pea-soup. A shabby temple rises on an island in this delectable lake, which is approached by a rotten barge that lies at roost in a dilapidated boat house. Clumps of elms and oaks dot over the huge green flat. Every one of them would have been down long since, but that the Marquis is not allowed to cut the timber.

Up that long avenue the Snobographer walked in solitude. At the seventy-ninth tree on the left-hand side, the insolvent butcher hanged himself. I scarcely wondered at the dismal deed, so woful and sad were the impressions connected with the place. So, for a mile and a half I walked--alone and thinking of death.

I forgot to say the house is in full view all the way--except when intercepted by the trees on the miserable island in the lake--an enormous red-brick mansion, square, vast, and dingy. It is flanked by four stone towers with weathercocks. In the midst of the grand facade is a huge Ionic portico, approached by a vast, lonely, ghastly staircase. Rows of black windows, framed in stone, stretch on either side, right and left--three storeys and eighteen windows of a row. You may see a picture of the palace and staircase, in the 'Views of England and Wales,' with four carved and gilt carriages waiting at the gravel walk, and several parties of ladies and gentlemen in wigs and hoops, dotting the fatiguing lines of stairs.

But these stairs are made in great houses for people NOT to ascend. The first Lady Carabas (they are but eighty years in the peerage), if she got out of her gilt coach in a shower, would be wet to the skin before she got half-way to the carved Ionic portico, where four dreary statues of Peace, Plenty, Piety and Patriotism, are the only sentinels. You enter these palaces by back-doors. 'That was the way the Carabases got their peerage,' the misanthropic Ponto said after dinner.

Well--I rang the bell at a little low side-door; it clanged and jingled and echoed for a long, long while, till at length a face, as of a housekeeper, peered through the door, and, as she saw my hand in my waistcoat pocket, opened it. Unhappy, lonely housekeeper, I thought. Is Miss Crusoe in her island more solitary? The door clapped to, and I was in Castle Carabas.

'The side entrance and All,' says the housekeeper. 'The halligator hover the mantelpiece was brought home by Hadmiral St. Michaels, when a Capting with Lord Hanson. The harms on the cheers is the harms of the Carabas family.' The hall was rather comfortable. We went clapping up a clean stone backstair, and then into a back passage cheerfully decorated with ragged light-green Kidderminster, and issued upon

'THE GREAT ALL.

'The great all is seventy-two feet in lenth, fifty-six in breath, and thirty-eight feet 'igh. The carvings of the chimlies, representing the birth of Venus, and Ercules, and Eyelash, is by Van Chislum, the most famous sculpture of his hage and country. The ceiling, by Calimanco, represents Painting, Harchitecture and Music (the naked female figure with the barrel horgan) introducing George, fust Lord Carabas, to the Temple of the Muses. The winder ornaments is by Vanderputty. The floor is Patagonian marble; and the chandelier in the centre was presented to Lionel, second Marquis, by Lewy the Sixteenth, whose 'ead was cut hoff in the French Revelation. We now henter

THE SOUTH GALLERY.

'One 'undred and forty-eight in lenth by thirty-two in breath; it is profusely hornaminted by the choicest works of Hart. Sir Andrew Katz, founder of the Carabas family and banker of the Prince of Horange, Kneller. Her present Ladyship, by Lawrence. Lord St. Michaels, by the same--he is represented sittin' on a rock in velvit pantaloons. Moses in the bullrushes--the bull very fine, by Paul Potter. The toilet of Venus, Fantaski. Flemish Bores drinking, Van Ginnums. Jupiter and Europia, de Horn. The Grandjunction Canal, Venis, by Candleetty; and Italian Bandix, by Slavata Rosa.'--And so this worthy woman went on, from one room into another, from the blue room to the green, and the green to the grand saloon, and the grand saloon to the tapestry closet, cackling her list of pictures and wonders: and furtively turning up a corner of brown holland to show the colour of the old, faded, seedy, mouldy, dismal hangings.

At last we came to her Ladyship's bed-room. In the centre of this dreary apartment there is a bed about the size of one of those whizgig temples in which the Genius appears in a pantomime. The huge gilt edifice is approached by steps, and so tall, that it might be let off in floors, for sleeping-rooms for all the Carabas family. An awful bed! A murder might be done at one end of that bed, and people sleeping at the other end be ignorant of it. Gracious powers! fancy little Lord Carabas in a nightcap ascending those steps after putting out the candle!

The sight of that seedy and solitary splendour was too much for me. I should go mad were I that lonely housekeeper--in those enormous galleries--in that lonely library, filled up with ghastly folios that nobody dares read, with an inkstand on the centre table like the coffin of a baby, and sad portraits staring at you from the bleak walls with their solemn Mouldy eyes. No wonder that Carabas does not come down here often.

It would require two thousand footmen to make the place cheerful. No wonder the coachman resigned his wig, that the masters are insolvent, and the servants perish in this huge dreary out-at-elbow place.

A single family has no more right to build itself a temple of that sort than to erect a Tower of Babel. Such a habitation is not decent for a mere mortal man. But, after all, I suppose poor Carabas had no choice. Fate put him there as it sent Napoleon to St. Helena. Suppose it had been decreed by Nature that you and I should be Marquises? We wouldn't refuse, I suppose, but take Castle Carabas and all, with debts, duns, and mean makeshifts, and shabby pride, and swindling magnificence.

Next season, when I read of Lady Carabas's splendid entertainments in the MORNING POST, and see the poor old insolvent cantering through the Park--I shall have a much tenderer interest in these great people than I have had heretofore. Poor old shabby Snob! Ride on and fancy the world is still on its knees before the house of Carabas! Give yourself airs, poor old bankrupt Magnifico, who are under money-obligations to your flunkeys; and must stoop so as to swindle poor tradesmen! And for us, O my brother Snobs, oughtn't we to feel happy if our walk through life is more even, and that we are out of the reach of that surprising arrogance and that astounding meanness to which this wretched old victim is obliged to mount and descend.

CHAPTER XXIX--A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

Notable as my reception had been (under that unfortunate mistake of Mrs. Ponto that I was related to Lord Snobbington, which I was not permitted to correct), it was nothing compared to the bowing and kotooing, the raptures and flurry which preceded and welcomed the visit of a real live lord and lord's son, a brother officer of Cornet Wellesley Ponto, in the 120th Hussars, who came over with the young Cornet from Guttlebury, where their distinguished regiment was quartered. This was my Lord Gules, Lord Saltire's grandson and heir: a very young, short, sandy-haired and tobacco-smoking nobleman, who cannot have left the nursery very long, and who, though he accepted the honest Major's invitation to the Evergreens in a letter written in a school-boy handwriting, with a number of faults of spelling, may yet be a very fine classical scholar for what I know: having had his education at Eton, where he and young Ponto were inseparable.

At any rate, if he can't write, he has mastered a number of other accomplishments wonderful for one of his age and size. He is one of the best shots and riders in England. He rode his horse Abracadabra, and won the famous Guttlebury steeple-chase. He has horses entered at half the races in the country (under other people's names; for the old lord is a strict hand, and will not hear of betting or gambling). He has lost and won such sums of money as my Lord George himself might be proud of. He knows all the stables, and all the jockeys, and has all the 'information,' and is a match for the best Leg at Newmarket. Nobody was ever known to be 'too much' for him at play or in the stable.

Although his grandfather makes him a moderate allowance, by the aid of POST-OBITS and convenient friends he can live in a splendour becoming his rank. He has not distinguished himself in the knocking down of policemen much; he is not big enough for that. But, as a light-weight, his skill is of the very highest order. At billiards he is said to be first-rate. He drinks and smokes as much as any two of the biggest officers in his regiment. With such high talents, who can say how far he may not go? He may take to politics as a DELASSEMENT, and be Prime Minister after Lord George Bentinck.

My young friend Wellesley Ponto is a gaunt and bony youth, with a pale face profusely blotched. From his continually pulling something on his chin, I am led to fancy that he believes he has what is called an Imperial growing there. That is not the only tuft that is hunted in the family, by the way. He can't, of course, indulge in those expensive amusements which render his aristocratic comrade so respected: he bets pretty freely when he is in cash, and rides when somebody mounts him (for he can't afford more than his regulation chargers). At drinking he is by no means inferior; and why do you think he brought his noble friend, Lord Gules, to the Evergreens?--Why? because he intended to ask his mother to order his father to pay his debts, which she couldn't refuse before such an exalted presence. Young Ponto gave me all this information with the most engaging frankness. We are old friends. I used to tip him when he was at school.

'Gad!': says he, 'our wedgment's so DOOTHID exthpenthif. Must hunt, you know. A man couldn't live in the wedgment if he didn't. Mess expenses enawmuth. Must dine at mess. Must drink champagne and claret. Ours ain't a port and sherry light-infantry mess. Uniform's awful. Fitzstultz, our Colonel, will have 'em so. Must be a distinction you know. At his own expense Fitzstultz altered the plumes in the men's caps (you called them shaving-brushes, Snob, my boy: most absurd and unjust that attack of yours, by the way); that altewation alone cotht him five hundred pound. The year befaw latht he horthed the wegiment at an immenthe expenthe, and we're called the Queen'th Own Pyebalds from that day. Ever theen uth on pawade? The Empewar Nicolath burtht into tearth of envy when he thaw uth at Windthor. And you see,' continued my young friend, 'I brought Gules down with me, as the Governor is very sulky about shelling out, just to talk my mother over, who can do anything with him. Gules told her that I was Fitzstultz's favourite of the whole regiment; and, Gad! she thinks the Horse Guards will give me my troop for nothing, and he humbugged the Governor that I was the greatest screw in the army. Ain't it a good dodge?'

With this Wellesley left me to go and smoke a cigar in the stables with Lord Gules, and make merry over the cattle there, under Stripes's superintendence. Young Ponto laughed with his friend, at the venerable four-wheeled cruelty-chaise; but seemed amazed that the latter should ridicule still more an ancient chariot of the build of 1824, emblazoned immensely with the arme of the Pontos and the Snaileys, from which latter distinguished family Mrs. Ponto issued.

I found poor Pon in his study among his boots, in such a rueful attitude of despondency, that I could not but remark it. 'Look at that!' says the poor fellow, handing me over a document. 'It's the second change in uniform since he's been in the army, and yet there's no extravagance about the lad. Lord Gules tells me he is the most careful youngster in the regiment, God bless him! But look at that! by heaven, Snob, look at that and say how can a man of nine hundred keep out of the Bench?' He gave a sob as he handed me the paper across the table; and his old face, and his old corduroys, and his shrunk shooting-jacket, and his lean shanks, looked, as he spoke, more miserably haggard, bankrupt, and threadbare.

LIEUT. WELLESLEY PONTO, 120TH QUEEN'S OWN PYEBALD HUSSARS, TO KNOPF AND STECKNADEL, CONDUIT STREET, LONDON. L. s. d Dress Jacket, richly laced with gold . 35 0 0 Ditto Pelisse ditto, and trimmed with sable . . 60 0 0 Undress Jacket, trimmed with gold 15 15 0 Ditto Pelisse . . 30 0 0 Dress Pantaloons 12 0 0 Ditto Overalls, gold lace on sides. 6 6 0 Undress ditto ditto. 5 5 0 Blue Braided Frock 14 14 0 Forage Cap . . 3 3 0 Dress Cap, gold lines, plume and chain . . . 25 0 0 Gold Barrelled Sash 11 18 0 Sword . . 11 11 0 Ditto Belt and Sabretache .. 16 16 0 Pouch and Belt. 15 15 0 SwordKnot .. 1 4 0 Cloak . .. 13 13 0 Valise . .. 3 13 6 Regulation Saddle . 7 17 6 Ditto Bridle, complete . .. 10 10 0 A Dress Housing, complete .. 30 0 0 A pair of Pistols. 10 10 0 A Black Sheepskin, edged. . . 6 18 0 Total L347 9 0

That evening Mrs. Ponto and her family made their darling Wellesley give a full, true, and particular account of everything that had taken place at Lord Fitzstultz's; how many servants waited at dinner; and how the Ladies Schneider dressed; and what his Royal Highness said when he came down to shoot; and who was there? "What a blessing that boy is to me!" said she, as my pimple-faced young friend moved off to resume smoking operations with Gules in the now vacant kitchen;--and poor Ponto's dreary and desperate look, shall I ever forget that?

O you parents and guardians! O you men and women of sense in England! O you legislators about to assemble in Parliament! read over that tailor's bill above printed, read over that absurd catalogue of insane gimcracks and madman's tomfoolery--and say how are you ever to get rid of Snobbishness when society does so much for its education?

Three hundred and forty pounds for a young chap's saddle and breeches! Before George, I would rather be a Hottentot or a Highlander. We laugh at poor Jocko, the monkey, dancing in uniform; or at poor Jeames, the flunkey, with his quivering calves and plush tights; or at the nigger Marquis of Marmalade, dressed out with sabre and epaulets, and giving himself the airs of a field-marshal. Lo! is not one of the Queen's Pyebalds, in full fig, as great and foolish a monster?

CHAPTER XXX--ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

At last came that fortunate day at the Evergreens, when I was to be made acquainted with some of the 'county families' with whom only people of Ponto's rank condescended to associate. And now, although poor Ponto had just been so cruelly made to bleed on occasion of his son's new uniform, and though he was in the direst and most cut-throat spirits with an overdrawn account at the banker's, and other pressing evils of poverty; although a tenpenny bottle of Marsala and an awful parsimony presided generally at his table, yet the poor fellow was obliged to assume the most frank and jovial air of cordiality; and all the covers being removed from the hangings, and new dresses being procured for the young ladies, and the family plate being unlocked and displayed, the house and all within assumed a benevolent and festive appearance. The kitchen fires began to blaze, the good wine ascended from the cellar, a professed cook actually came over from Guttlebury to compile culinary abominations. Stripes was in a new coat, and so was Ponto, for a wonder, and Tummus's button-suit was worn EN PERMANENCE.

And all this to show off the little lord, thinks I. All this in honour of a stupid little cigarrified Cornet of dragoons, who can barely write his name,--while an eminent and profound moralist like--somebody--is fobbed off with cold mutton and relays of pig. Well, well: a martyrdom of cold mutton is just bearable. I pardon Mrs. Ponto, from my heart I do, especially as I wouldn't turn out of the best bed-room, in spite of all her hints; but held my ground in the chintz tester, vowing that Lord Gules, as a young man, was quite small and hardy enough to make himself comfortable elsewhere.

The great Ponto party was a very august one. The Hawbucks came in their family coach, with the blood-red band emblazoned all over it: and their man in yellow livery waited in country fashion at table, only to be exceeded in splendour by the Hipsleys, the opposition baronet, in light blue. The old Ladies Fitzague drove over in their little old chariot with the fat black horses, the fat coachman, the fat footman--(why are dowagers' horses and footmen always fat?) And soon after these personages had arrived, with their auburn fronts and red beaks and turbans, came the Honourable and Reverend Lionel Pettipois, who with General and Mrs. Sago formed the rest of the party. 'Lord and Lady Frederick Howlet were asked, but they have friends at Ivybush,' Mrs. Ponto told me; and that very morning, the Castlehaggards sent an excuse, as her ladyship had a return of the quinsy. Between ourselves, Lady Castlehaggard's quinsy always comes on when there is dinner at the Evergreens.

If the keeping of polite company could make a woman happy, surely my kind hostess Mrs. Ponto was on that day a happy woman. Every person present (except the unlucky impostor who pretended to a connexion with the Snobbington Family, and General Sago, who had brought home I don't know how many lacs of rupees from India,) was related to the Peerage or the Baronetage. Mrs. P. had her heart's desire. If she had been an Earl's daughter herself could she have expected better company?--and her family were in the oil-trade at Bristol, as all her friends very well know.

What I complained of in my heart was not the dining--which, for this once, was plentiful and comfortable enough--but the prodigious dulness of the talking part of the entertainment. O my beloved brother Snobs of the City, if we love each other no better than our country brethren, at least we amuse each other more; if we bore ourselves, we are not called upon to go ten miles to do it!

For instance, the Hipsleys came ten miles from the south, and the Hawbucks ten miles from the north, of the Evergreens; and were magnates in two different divisions of the county of Mangelwurzelshire. Hipsley, who is an old baronet, with a bothered estate, did not care to show his contempt for Hawbuck, who is a new creation, and rich. Hawbuck, on his part, gives himself patronizing airs to General Sago, who looks upon the Pontos as little better than paupers. 'Old Lady Blanche,' says Ponto, 'I hope will leave something to her god-daughter--my second girl--we've all of us half-poisoned ourselves with taking her physic.'

Lady Blanche and Lady Rose Fitzague have, the first, a medical, and the second a literary turn. I am inclined to believe the former had a wet COMPRESSE around her body, on the occasion when I had the happiness of meeting her. She doctors everybody in the neighbourhood of which she is the ornament; and has tried everything on her own person. She went into Court, and testified publicly her faith in St. John Long: she swore by Doctor Buchan, she took quantities of Gambouge's Universal Medicine, and whole boxfuls of Parr's Life Pills. She has cured a multiplicity of headaches by Squinstone's Eye-snuff; she wears a picture of Hahnemann in her bracelet and a lock of Priessnitz's hair in a brooch. She talked about her own complaints and those of her CONFIDANTE for the time being, to every lady in the room successively, from our hostess down to Miss Wirt, taking them into corners, and whispering about bronchitis, hepatitis, St. Vitus, neuralgia, cephalalgia, and so forth. I observed poor fat Lady Hawbuck in a dreadful alarm after some communication regarding the state of her daughter Miss Lucy Hawbuck's health, and Mrs. Sago turned quite yellow, and put down her third glass of Madeira, at a warning glance from Lady Blanche.

Lady Rose talked literature, and about the book-club at Guttlebury, and is very strong in voyages and travels. She has a prodigious interest in Borneo, and displayed a knowledge of the history of the Punjaub and Kaffirland that does credit to her memory. Old General Sago, who sat perfectly silent and plethoric, roused up as from a lethargy when the former country was mentioned, and gave the company his story about a hog-hunt at Ramjugger. I observed her ladyship treated with something like contempt her neighbour the Reverend Lionel Pettipois, a young divine whom you may track through the country by little 'awakening' books at half-a-crown a hundred, which dribble out of his pockets wherever he goes. I saw him give Miss Wirt a sheaf of 'The Little Washer-woman on Putney Common,' and to Miss Hawbuck a couple of dozen of 'Meat in the Tray; or the Young Butcher-boy Rescued;' and on paying a visit to Guttlebury gaol, I saw two notorious fellows waiting their trial there (and temporarily occupied with a game of cribbage), to whom his Reverence offered a tract as he was walking over Crackshins Common, and who robbed him of his purse, umbrella, and cambric handkerchief, leaving him the tracts to distribute elsewhere.

CHAPTER XXXI--A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

'Why, dear Mr. Snob,' said a young lady of rank and fashion (to whom I present my best compliments), 'if you found everything so SNOBBISH at the Evergreens, if the pig bored you and the mutton was not to your liking, and Mrs. Ponto was a humbug, and Miss Wirt a nuisance, with her abominable piano practice,--why did you stay so long?'

Ah, Miss, what a question! Have you never heard of gallant British soldiers storming batteries, of doctors passing nights in plague wards of lazarettos, and other instances of martyrdom? What do you suppose induced gentlemen to walk two miles up to the batteries of Sabroan, with a hundred and fifty thundering guns bowling them down by hundreds?--not pleasure, surely. What causes your respected father to quit his comfortable home for his chambers, after dinner, and pore over the most dreary law papers until long past midnight?, Mademoiselle; duty, which must be done alike by military, or legal, or literary gents. There's a power of martyrdom in our profession.

You won't believe it? Your rosy lips assume a smile of incredulity--a most naughty and odious expression in a young lady's face. Well, then, the fact is, that my chambers, No. 24, Pump Court, Temple, were being painted by the Honourable Society, and Mrs. Slamkin, my laundress, having occasion to go into Durham to see her daughter, who is married, and has presented her with the sweetest little grandson--a few weeks could not be better spent than in rusticating. But ah, how delightful Pump Court looked when I revisited its well-known chimney-pots! CARI LUOGHI. Welcome, welcome, O fog and smut!

But if you think there is no moral in the foregoing account of the Pontine family, you are, Madam, most painfully mistaken. In this very chapter we are going to have the moral--why, the whole of the papers are nothing BUT the moral, setting forth as they do the folly of being a Snob.

You will remark that in the Country Snobography my poor friend Ponto has been held up almost exclusively for the public gaze--and why? Because we went to no other house? Because other families did not welcome us to their mahogany? No, no. Sir John Hawbuck of the Haws, Sir John Hipsley of Briary Hall, don't shut the gates of hospitality: of General Sago's mulligatawny I could speak from experience. And the two old ladies at Guttlebury, were they nothing? Do you suppose that an agreeable young dog, who shall be nameless, would not be made welcome? Don't you know that people are too glad to see ANYBODY in the country?

But those dignified personages do not enter into the scheme of the present work, and are but minor characters of our Snob drama; just as, in the play, kings and emperors are not half so important as many humble persons. The DOGE OF VENICE, for instance, gives way to OTHELLO, who is but a nigger; and the KING OF FRANCE to FALCONBRIDGE, who is a gentleman of positively no birth at all. So with the exalted characters above mentioned. I perfectly well recollect that the claret at Hawbuck's was not by any means so good as that of Hipsley's, while, on the contrary, some white hermitage at the Haws (by the way, the butler only gave me half a glass each time) was supernacular. And I remember the conversations. O Madam, Madam, how stupid they were! The subsoil ploughing; the pheasants and poaching; the row about the representation of the county; the Earl of Mangelwurzelshire being at variance with his relative and nominee, the Honourable Marmaduke Tomnoddy; all these I could put down, had I a mind to violate the confidence of private life; and a great deal of conversation about the weather, the Mangelwurzelshire Hunt, new manures, and eating and drinking, of course.

But CUI BONO? In these perfectly stupid and honourable families there is not that Snobbishness which it is our purpose to expose. An ox is an ox--a great hulking, fat-sided, bellowing, munching Beef. He ruminates according to his nature, and consumes his destined portion of turnips or oilcake, until the time comes for his disappearance from the pastures, to be succeeded by other deep-lunged and fat-ribbed animals. Perhaps we do not respect an ox. We rather acquiesce in him. The Snob, my dear Madam, is the Frog that tries to swell himself to ox size. Let us pelt the silly brute out of his folly.

Look, I pray you, at the case of my unfortunate friend Ponto, a good-natured, kindly English gentleman--not over-wise, but quite passable--fond of port-wine, of his family, of country sports and agriculture, hospitably minded, with as pretty a little patrimonial country-house as heart can desire, and a thousand pounds a year. It is not much; but, ENTRE NOUS, people can live for less, and not uncomfortably.

For instance, there is the doctor, whom Mrs. P. does not condescend to visit: that man educates a mirific family, and is loved by the poor for miles round: and gives them port-wine for physic and medicine, gratis. And how those people can get on with their pittance, as Mrs. Ponto says, is a wonder to HER.

Again, there is the clergyman, Doctor Chrysostom,--Mrs. P. says they quarrelled about Puseyism, but I am given to understand it was because Mrs. C. had the PAS of her at the Haws--you may see what the value of his living is any day in the 'Clerical Guide;' but you don't know what he gives away.

Even Pettipois allows that, in whose eyes the Doctor's surplice is a scarlet abomination; and so does Pettipois do his duty in his way, and administer not only his tracts and his talk, but his money and his means to his people. As a lord's son, by the way, Mrs. Ponto is uncommonly anxious that he should marry EITHER of the girls whom Lord Gules does not intend to choose.

Well, although Pon's income would make up almost as much as that of these three worthies put together--oh, my dear Madam, see in what hopeless penury the poor fellow lives! What tenant can look to HIS forbearance? What poor man can hope for HIS charity? 'Master's the best of men,' honest Stripes says, 'and when we was in the ridgment a more free-handed chap didn't live. But the way in which Missus DU scryou, I wonder the young ladies is alive, that I du!'

They live upon a fine governess and fine masters, and have clothes made by Lady Carabas's own milliner; and their brother rides with earls to cover; and only the best people in the county visit at the Evergreens, and Mrs. Ponto thinks herself a paragon of wives and mothers, and a wonder of the world, for doing all this misery and humbug, and snobbishness, on a thousand a year.

What an inexpressible comfort it was, my dear Madam, when Stripes put my portmanteau in the four-wheeled chaise, and (poor P on being touched with sciatica) drove me over to 'Carabas Arms' at Guttlebury, where we took leave. There were some bagmen there in the Commercial Room, and one talked about the house he represented; and another about his dinner, and a third about the Inns on the road, and so forth--a talk, not very wise, but honest and to the purpose--about as good as that of the country gentlemen: and oh, how much pleasanter than listening to Miss Wirt's show-pieces on the piano, and Mrs. Ponto's genteel cackle about the fashion and the county families!

CHAPTER XXXII--SNOBBIUM GATHERUM

WHEN I see the great effect which these papers are producing on an intelligent public, I have a strong hope that before long we shall have a regular Snob department in the newspapers, just as we have the Police Courts and the Court News at present. When a flagrant case of bone-crushing or Poor-law abuse occurs in the world, who so eloquent as THE TIMES to point it out? When a gross instance of Snobbishness happens, why should not the indignant journalist call the public attention to that delinquency too?

How, for instance, could that wonderful case of the Earl of Mangelwurzel and his brother be examined in the Snobbish point of view? Let alone the hectoring, the bullying, the vapouring, the bad grammar, the mutual recriminations, lie-givings, challenges, retractations, which abound in the fraternal dispute--put out of the question these points as concerning the individual nobleman and his relative, with whose personal affairs we have nothing to do--and consider how intimately corrupt, how habitually grovelling and mean, how entirely Snobbish in a word, a whole county must be which can find no better chiefs or leaders than these two gentlemen. 'We don't want,' the great county of Mangelwurzelshire seems to say, 'that a man should be able to write good grammar; or that he should keep a Christian tongue in his head; or that he should have the commonest decency of temper, or even a fair share of good sense, in order to represent us in Parliament.

All we require is, that a man should be recommended to us by the Earl of Mangelwurzelshire. And all that we require of the Earl of Mangelwurzelshire is that he should have fifty thousand a year and hunt the country.' O you pride of all Snobland! O you crawling, truckling, self-confessed lackeys and parasites!

But this is growing too savage: don't let us forget our usual amenity, and that tone of playfulness and sentiment with which the beloved reader and writer have pursued their mutual reflections hitherto. Well, Snobbishness pervades the little Social Farce as well as the great State Comedy; and the self-same moral is tacked to either.

There was, for instance, an account in the papers of a young lady who, misled by a fortune-teller, actually went part of the way to India (as far as Bagnigge Wells, I think,) in search of a husband who was promised her there. Do you suppose this poor deluded little soul would have left her shop for a man below her in rank, or for anything but a darling of a Captain in epaulets and a red coat. It was her Snobbish sentiment that misled her, and made her vanities a prey to the swindling fortune-teller.

Case 2 was that of Mademoiselle de Saugrenue, 'the interesting young Frenchwoman with a profusion of jetty ringlets,' who lived for nothing at a boardinghouse at Gosport, was then conveyed to Fareham gratis: and being there, and lying on the bed of the good old lady her entertainer, the dear girl took occasion to rip open the mattress, and steal a cash-box, with which she fled to London. How would you account for the prodigious benevolence exercised towards the interesting young French lady? Was it her jetty ringlets or her charming face?--Bah! Do ladies love others for having faces and black hair?--she said SHE WAS A RELATION OF de Saugrenue: talked of her ladyship her aunt, and of herself as a De Saugrenue. The honest boarding-house people were at her feet at once. Good, honest, simple, lord-loving children of Snobland.

Finally, there was the case of 'the Right Honourable Mr. Vernon,' at York. The Right Honourable was the son of a nobleman, and practised on an old lady. He procured from her dinners, money, wearing-apparel, spoons, implicit credence, and an entire refit of linen. Then he cast his nets over a family of father, mother, and daughters, one of whom he proposed to marry. The father lent him money, the mother made jams and pickles for him, the daughters vied with each other in cooking dinners for the Right Honourable--and what was the end? One day the traitor fled, with a teapot and a basketful of cold victuals. It was the 'Right Honourable' which baited the hook which gorged all these greedy, simple Snobs. Would they have been taken in by a commoner? What old lady is there, my dear sir, who would take in you and me, were we ever so ill to do, and comfort us, and clothe us, and give us her money, and her silver forks? Alas and alas! what mortal man that speaks the truth can hope for such a landlady? And yet, all these instances of fond and credulous Snobbishness have occurred in the same week's paper, with who knows how many score more?

Just as we had concluded the above remarks comes a pretty little note sealed with a pretty little butterfly--bearing a northern postmark--and to the following effect:--

'19th November.

'Mr. Punch,--'Taking great interest in your Snob Papers, we are very anxious to know under what class of that respectable fraternity you would designate us.

'We are three sisters, from seventeen to twenty-two. Our father is HONESTLY AND TRULY of a very good family (you will say it is Snobbish to mention that, but I wish to state the plain fact); our maternal grandfather was an Earl.' (1)

'We CAN afford to take in a stamped edition of YOU, and all Dickens' works as fast as they come out, but we do NOT keep such a thing as a PEERAGE or even a BARONETAGE in the house.

'We live with every comfort, excellent cellar, &c. &c.; but as we cannot well afford a butler, we have a neat table-maid (though our father was a military man, has travelled much, been in the best society, &c.) We HAVE a coachman and helper, but we don't put the latter into buttons, nor make them wait at table, like Stripes and Tummus.' (2)

'We are just the same to persons with a handle to their name as to those without it. We wear a moderate modicum of crinoline, (3)and are never limp (4) in the morning. We have good and abundant dinners on CHINA though we have plate (5), and just as good when alone as with company.

'Now, my dear MR. PUNCH, will you PLEASE give us a short answer in your next number, and I will be SO much obliged to you. Nobody knows we are writing to you, not even our father; nor will we ever tease (6) you again if you will only give us an answer--just for FUN, now do!

'If you get as far as this, which is doubtful, you will probably fling it into the fire. If you do, I cannot help it; but I am of a sanguine disposition, and entertain a lingering hope. At all events, I shall be impatient for next Sunday, for you reach us on that day, and I am ashamed to confess, we CANNOT resist opening you in the carriage driving home from church. (7)

'I remain, &c. &c., for myself and sisters.

Excuse this scrawl, but I always write headlong. (8)

'P. S.--You were rather stupid last week, don't you think? (9) We keep no gamekeeper, and yet have always abundant game for friends to shoot, in spite of the poachers. We never write on perfumed paper--in short, I can't help thinking that if you knew us you would not think us Snobs.'

To this I reply in the following manner:--'My dear young ladies, I know your post-town: and shall be at church there the Sunday AFTER next; when, will you please to wear a tulip or some little trifle in your bonnets, so that I may know you? You will recognize me and my dress--a quiet-looking young fellow, in a white top-coat, a crimson satin neckcloth, light blue trousers, with glossy tipped boots, and an emerald breast-pin. I shall have a black crape round my white hat; and my usual bamboo cane with the richly-gilt knob. I am sorry there will be no time to get up moustaches between now and next week.

'From seventeen to two-and-twenty! Ye gods! what ages! Dear young creatures, I can see you all three. Seventeen suits me, as nearest my own time of life; but mind, I don't say two-and-twenty is too old. No, no. And that pretty, roguish, demure, middle one. Peace, peace, thou silly little fluttering heart!

'YOU Snobs, dear young ladies! I will pull any man's nose who says so. There is no harm in being of a good family. You can't help it, poor dears. What's in a name? What is in a handle to it? I confess openly that I should not object to being a Duke myself; and between ourselves you might see a worse leg for a garter.

'YOU Snobs, dear little good-natured things, no that is, I hope not--I think not--I won't be too confident--none of us should be--that we are not Snobs. That very confidence savours of arrogance, and to be arrogant is to be a Snob. In all the social gradations from sneak to tyrant, nature has placed a most wondrous and various progeny of Snobs. But are there no kindly natures, no tender hearts, no souls humble, simple, and truth-loving? Ponder well on this question, sweet young ladies. And if you can answer it, as no doubt you can--lucky are you--and lucky the respected Herr Papa, and lucky the three handsome young gentlemen who are about to become each others' brothers-in-law.'

(1) The introduction of Grandpapa, is I fear, Snobbish.

(2) That is, as you like. I don't object to buttons in moderation.

(3) Quite right.

(4) Bless you!

(5) Snobbish; and I doubt whether you ought to dine as well alone as with company. You will be getting too good dinners.

(6) We like to be teased; but tell Papa.

(7) O garters and stars! what will Captain Gordon and Exeter Hall say to this?

(8) Dear little enthusiast!

(9) You were never more mistaken, miss, in your life.

CHAPTER XXXIII--SNOBS AND MARRIAGE

Everybody of the middle rank who walks through this life with a sympathy for his companions on the same journey--at any rate, every man who has been jostling in the world for some three or four lustres--must make no end of melancholy reflections upon the fate of those victims whom Society, that is, Snobbishness, is immolating every day. With love and simplicity and natural kindness Snobbishness is perpetually at war. People dare not be happy for fear of Snobs. People dare not love for fear of Snobs. People pine away lonely under the tyranny of Snobs. Honest kindly hearts dry up and die. Gallant generous lads, blooming with hearty youth, swell into bloated old-bachelorhood, and burst and tumble over. Tender girls wither into shrunken decay, and perish solitary, from whom Snobbishness has cut off the common claim to happiness and affection with which Nature endowed us all. My heart grows sad as I see the blundering tyrant's handiwork. As I behold it I swell with cheap rage, and glow with fury against the Snob. Come down, I say, thou skulking dulness! Come down, thou stupid bully, and give up thy brutal ghost! And I arm myself with the sword and spear, and taking leave of my family, go forth to do battle with that hideous ogre and giant, that brutal despot in Snob Castle, who holds so many gentle hearts in torture and thrall.

When PUNCH is king, I declare there shall be no such thing as old maids and old bachelors. The Reverend Mr. Malthus shall be burned annually, instead of Guy Fawkes. Those who don't marry shall go into the workhouse. It shall be a sin for the poorest not to have a pretty girl to love him.

The above reflections came to mind after taking a walk with an old comrade, Jack Spiggot by name, who is just passing into the state of old-bachelorhood, after the manly and blooming youth in which I remember him. Jack was one of the handsomest fellows in England when we entered together in the Highland Buffs; but I quitted the Cuttykilts early, and lost sight of him for many years.

Ah! how changed he is from those days! He wears a waistband now, and has begun to dye his whiskers. His cheeks, which were red, are now mottled; his eyes, once so bright and steadfast, are the colour of peeled plovers' eggs.

'Are you married, Jack?' says I, remembering how consumedly in love he was with his cousin Letty Lovelace, when the Cuttykilts were quartered at Strathbungo some twenty years ago.

'Married? no,' says he. 'Not money enough. Hard enough to keep myself, much more a family, on five hundred a year. Come to Dickinson's; there's some of the best Madeira in London there, my boy.' So we went and talked over old times. The bill for dinner and wine consumed was prodigious, and the quantity of brandy-and-water that Jack took showed what a regular boozer he was. 'A guinea or two guineas. What the devil do I care what I spend for my dinner?' says he.

'And Letty Lovelace?' says I.

Jack's countenance fell. However, he burst into a loud laugh presently. 'Letty Lovelace!' says he. 'She's Letty Lovelace still; but Gad, such a wizened old woman! She's as thin as a thread-paper; (you remember what a figure she had:) her nose has got red, and her teeth blue. She's always ill; always quarrelling with the rest of the family; always psalm-singing, and always taking pills. Gad, I had a rare escape THERE. Push round the grog, old boy.'

Straightway memory went back to the days when Letty was the loveliest of blooming young creatures: when to hear her sing was to make the heart jump into your throat; when to see her dance, was better than Montessu or Noblet (they were the Ballet Queens of those days); when Jack used to wear a locket of her hair, with a little gold chain round his neck, and, exhilarated with toddy, after a sederunt of the Cuttykilt mess, used to pull out this token, and kiss it, and howl about it, to the great amusement of the bottle-nosed old Major and the rest of the table.

'My father and hers couldn't put their horses together,' Jack said. 'The General wouldn't come down with more than six thousand. My governor said it shouldn't be done under eight. Lovelace told him to go and be hanged, and so we parted company. They said she was in a decline. Gammon! She's forty, and as tough and as sour as this bit of lemon-peel. Don't put much into your punch, Snob my boy. No man CAN stand punch after wine.'

'And what are your pursuits, Jack?' says I.

'Sold out when the governor died. Mother lives at Bath. Go down there once a year for a week. Dreadful slow. Shilling whist. Four sisters--all unmarried except the youngest--awful work. Scotland in August. Italy in the winter. Cursed rheumatism. Come to London in March, and toddle about at the Club, old boy; and we won't go home till maw-aw-rning till daylight does appear.

'And here's the wreck of two lives!' mused the present Snobographer, after taking leave of Jack Spiggot. 'Pretty merry Letty Lovelace's rudder lost and she cast away, and handsome Jack Spiggot stranded on the shore like a drunken Trinculo.'

What was it that insulted Nature (to use no higher name), and perverted her kindly intentions towards them? What cursed frost was it that nipped the love that both were bearing, and condemned the girl to sour sterility, and the lad to selfish old-bachelorhood? It was the infernal Snob tyrant who governs us all, who says, 'Thou shalt not love without a lady's maid; thou shalt not marry without a carriage and horses; thou shalt have no wife in thy heart, and no children on thy knee, without a page in buttons and a French BONNE; thou shalt go to the devil unless thou hast a brougham; marry poor, and society shall forsake thee; thy kinsmen shall avoid thee as a criminal; thy aunts and uncles shall turn up their eyes and bemoan the sad, sad manner in which Tom or Harry has thrown himself away.' You, young woman, may sell yourself without shame, and marry old Croesus; you, young man, may lie away your heart and your life for a jointure. But if 'you are poor, woe be to you! Society, the brutal Snob autocrat, consigns you to solitary perdition. Wither, poor girl, in your garret; rot, poor bachelor, in your Club.

When I see those graceless recluses--those unnatural monks and nuns of the order of St. Beelzebub, (1) my hatred for Snobs, and their worship, and their idols, passes all continence. Let us hew down that man-eating Juggernaut, I say, that hideous Dagon; and I glow with the heroic courage of Tom Thumb, and join battle with the giant Snob.

(1) This, of course, is understood to apply only to those unmarried persons whom a mean and Snobbish fear about money has kept from fulfilling their natural destiny. Many persons there are devoted to celibacy because they cannot help it. Of these a man would be a brute who spoke roughly. Indeed, after Miss O'Toole's conduct to the writer, he would be the last to condemn. But never mind, these are personal matters.

CHAPTER XXXIV--SNOBS AND MARRIAGE

In that noble romance called 'Ten Thousand a Year,' I remember a profoundly pathetic description of the Christian manner in which the hero, Mr. Aubrey, bore his misfortunes. After making a display of the most florid and grandiloquent resignation, and quitting his country mansion, the writer supposes Aubrey to come to town in a post-chaise and pair, sitting bodkin probably between his wife and sister. It is about seven o'clock, carriages are rattling about, knockers are thundering, and tears bedim the fine eyes of Kate and Mrs. Aubrey as they think that in happier times at this hour--their Aubrey used formerly to go out to dinner to the houses of the aristocracy his friends. This is the gist of the passage--the elegant words I forget. But the noble, noble sentiment I shall always cherish and remember. What can be more sublime than the notion of a great man's relatives in tears about--his dinner? With a few touches, what author ever more happily described A Snob?

We were reading the passage lately at the house of my friend, Raymond Gray, Esquire, Barrister-at-Law, an ingenuous youth without the least practice, but who has luckily a great share of good spirits, which enables him to bide his time, and bear laughingly his humble position in the world. Meanwhile, until it is altered, the stern laws of necessity and the expenses of the Northern Circuit oblige Mr. Gray to live in a very tiny mansion in a very queer small square in the airy neighbourhood of Gray's Inn Lane.

What is the more remarkable is, that Gray has a wife there. Mrs. Gray was a Miss Harley Baker: and I suppose I need not say THAT is a respectable family. Allied to the Cavendishes, the Oxfords, the Marrybones, they still, though rather DECHUS from their original splendour, hold their heads as high as any. Mrs. Harley Baker, I know, never goes to church without John behind to carry her prayer-book; nor will Miss Welbeck, her sister, walk twenty yards a-shopping without the protection of Figby, her sugar-loaf page; though the old lady is as ugly as any woman in the parish and as tall and whiskery as a grenadier. The astonishment is, how Emily Harley Baker could have stooped to marry Raymond Gray. She, who was the prettiest and proudest of the family; she, who refused Sir Cockle Byles, of the Bengal Service; she, who turned up her little nose at Essex Temple, Q.C., and connected with the noble house of Albyn; she, who had but 4,000L. POUR TOUT POTAGE, to marry a man who had scarcely as much more. A scream of wrath and indignation was uttered by the whole family when they heard of this MESALLIANCE. Mrs. Harley Baker never speaks of her daughter now but with tears in her eyes, and as a ruined creature. Miss Welbeck says, 'I consider that man a villain;' and has denounced poor good-natured Mrs. Perkins as a swindler, at whose ball the young people met for the first time.

Mr. and Mrs. Gray, meanwhile, live in Gray's Inn Lane aforesaid, with a maid-servant and a nurse, whose hands are very full, and in a most provoking and unnatural state of happiness. They have never once thought of crying about their dinner, like the wretchedly puling and Snobbish womankind of my favourite Snob Aubrey, of 'Ten Thousand a Year;' but, on the contrary, accept such humble victuals as fate awards them with a most perfect and thankful good grace--nay, actually have a portion for a hungry friend at times--as the present writer can gratefully testify.

I was mentioning these dinners, and some admirable lemon puddings which Mrs. Gray makes, to our mutual friend the great Mr. Goldmore, the East India Director, when that gentleman's face assumed an expression of almost apoplectic terror, and he gasped out, 'What! Do they give dinners?' He seemed to think it a crime and a wonder that such people should dine at all, and that it was their custom to huddle round their kitchen-fire over a bone and a crust. Whenever he meets them in society, it is a matter of wonder to him (and he always expresses his surprise very loud) how the lady can appear decently dressed, and the man have an unpatched coat to his back. I have heard him enlarge upon this poverty before the whole room at the 'Conflagrative Club,' to which he and I and Gray have the honour to belong.

We meet at the Club on most days. At half-past four, Goldmore arrives in St. James's Street, from the City, and you may see him reading the evening papers in the bow-window of the Club, which enfilades Pall Mall--a large plethoric man, with a bunch of seals in a large bow-windowed light waistcoat. He has large coat-tails, stuffed with agents' letters and papers about companies of which he is a Director. His seals jingle as he walks. I wish I had such a man for an uncle, and that he himself were childless. I would love and cherish him, and be kind to him.

At six o'clock in the full season, when all the world is in St. James's Street, and the carriages are cutting in and out among the cabs on the stand, and the tufted dandies are showing their listless faces out of 'White's,' and you see respectable grey-headed gentlemen waggling their heads to each other through the plate-glass windows of 'Arthur's:' and the red-coats wish to be Briareian, so as to hold all the gentlemen's horses; and that wonderful red-coated royal porter is sunning himself before Marlborough House;--at the noon of London time, you see a light-yellow carriage with black horses, and a coachman in a tight floss-silk wig, and two footmen in powder and white and yellow liveries, and a large woman inside in shot-silk, a poodle, and a pink parasol, which drives up to the gate of the Conflagrative, and the page goes and says to Mr. Goldmore (who is perfectly aware of the fact, as he is looking out of the windows with about forty other 'Conflagrative' bucks), 'Your carriage, Sir.' G. wags his head. 'Remember, eight o'clock precisely,' says he to Mulligatawney, the other East India Director; and, ascending the carriage, plumps down by the side of Mrs. Goldmore for a drive in the Park, and then home to Portland Place. As the carriage whirls off, all the young bucks in the Club feel a secret elation. It is a part of their establishment, as it were. That carriage belongs to their Club, and their Club belongs to them. They follow the equipage with interest; they eye it knowingly as they see it in the Park. But halt! we are not come to the Club Snobs yet. O my brave Snobs, what a flurry there will be among you when those papers appear!

Well, you may judge, from the above description, what sort of a man Goldmore is. A dull and pompous Leadenhall Street Croesus, good-natured withal, and affable--cruelly affable. 'Mr. Goldmore can never forget,' his lady used to say, 'that it was Mrs. Gray's Grandfather who sent him to India; and though that young woman has made the most imprudent marriage in the world, and has left her station in society, her husband seems an ingenious and laborious young man, and we shall do everything in our power to be of use to him.' So they used to ask the Grays to dinner twice or thrice in a season, when, by way of increasing the kindness, Buff, the butler, is ordered to hire a fly to convey them to and from Portland Place.

Of course I am much too good-natured a friend of both parties not to tell Gray of Goldmore's opinion in him, and the nabob's astonishment at the of the briefless barrister having any dinner at all. Indeed, Goldmore's saying became a joke against Gray amongst us wags at the Club, and we used to ask him when he tasted meat last? whether we should bring him home something from dinner? and cut a thousand other mad pranks with him in our facetious way.

One day, then, coming home from the Club, Mr. Gray conveyed to his wife the astounding information that he had asked Goldmore to dinner.

'My love,' says Mrs. Gray, in a tremor, 'how could you be so cruel? Why, the dining-room won't hold Mrs. Goldmore.'

'Make your mind easy, Mrs. Gray; her ladyship is in Paris. It is only Croesus that's coming, and we are going to the play afterwards--to Sadler's Wells. Goldmore said at the Club that he thought Shakspeare was a great dramatic poet, and ought to be patronized; whereupon, fired with enthusiasm, I invited him to our banquet.'

'Goodness gracious! what CAN we give him for dinner? He has two French cooks; you know Mrs. Goldmore is always telling us about them; and he dines with Aldermen every day.'

'"A plain leg of mutton, my Lucy, I prythee get ready at three; Have it tender, and smoking, and juicy, And what better meat can there be?"'

says Gray, quoting my favourite poet.

'But the cook is ill; and you know that horrible Pattypan the pastrycook's---'

'Silence, Frau!' says Gray, in a deep tragedy voice. 'I will have the ordering of this repast. Do all things as I bid thee. Invite our friend Snob here to partake of the feast. Be mine the task of procuring it.'

'Don't be expensive, Raymond,' says his wife.

'Peace, thou timid partner of the briefless one. Goldmore's dinner shall be suited to our narrow means. Only do thou in all things my commands.' And seeing by the peculiar expression of the rogue's countenance, that some mad waggery was in preparation, I awaited the morrow with anxiety.

CHAPTER XXXV--SNOBS AND MARRIAGE

Punctual to the hour--(by the way, I cannot omit to mark down my hatred, scorn, and indignation towards those miserable Snobs who come to dinner at nine when they are asked at eight, in order to make a sensation in the company. May the loathing of honest folks, the backbiting of others, the curses of cooks, pursue these wretches, and avenge the society on which they trample!)--Punctual, I say, to the hour of five, which Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Gray had appointed, a youth of an elegant appearance, in a neat evening-dress, whose trim whiskers indicated neatness, whose light step denoted activity (for in sooth he was hungry, and always is at the dinner hour, whatsoever that hour may be), and whose rich golden hair, curling down his shoulders, was set off by a perfectly new four-and-ninepenny silk hat, was seen wending his way down Bittlestone Street, Bittlestone Square, Gray's Inn. The person in question, I need not say, was Mr. Snob. HE was never late when invited to dine. But to proceed my narrative:--

Mr. Snob may have flattered himself that he made a sensation as he strutted down Bittlestone with his richly gilt knobbed cane (and indeed I vow I saw heads looking at me from Miss Squilsby's, the brass-plated milliner opposite Raymond Gray's, who has three silver-paper bonnets, and two fly-blown prints of fashion in the window), yet what was the emotion produced by my arrival, compared to that which the little street thrilled, when at five minutes past five the floss-wigged coachman, the yellow hammer-cloth and flunkeys, the black horses and blazing silver harness of Mr. Goldmore whirled down the street!

It is a very little street, of very little houses, most of them with very large brass plates like Miss Squilsby's. Coal-merchants, architects and surveyors, two surgeons, a solicitor, a dancing-master, and of course several house-agents, occupy the houses--little two-storeyed edifices with little stucco porticoes. Goldmore's carriage overtopped the roofs almost; the first floors might shake hands with Croesus as he lolled inside; all the windows of those first floors thronged with children and women in a twinkling. There was Mrs. Hammerly in curl-papers; Mrs. Saxby with her front awry; Mr. Wriggles peering through the gauze curtains, holding the while his hot glass of rum-and-water--in fine, a tremendous commotion in Bittlestone Street, as the Goldmore carriage drove up to Mr. Raymond Gray's door.

'How kind it is of him to come with BOTH the footmen!' says little Mrs. Gray, peeping at the vehicle too. The huge domestic, descending from his perch, gave a rap at the door which almost drove in the building. All the heads were out; the sun was shining; the very organ-boy paused; the footman, the coach, and Goldmore's red face and white waistcoat were blazing in splendour. The herculean plushed one went back to open the carriage-door.

Raymond Gray opened his--in his shirt-sleeves. He ran up to the carriage. 'Come in, Goldmore,' says he; 'just in time, my boy. Open the door, What-d'ye-call'um, and let your master out,'--and What-d'ye-call'um obeyed mechanically, with a face of wonder and horror, only to be equalled by the look of stupefied astonishment which ornamented the purple countenance of his master.

'Wawt taim will you please have the CAGE, sir?' says What-d'ye-call'um, in that peculiar, unspellable, inimitable, flunkefied pronunciation which forms one of the chief charms of existence.

Best have it to the theatre at night,' Gray exclaims; 'it is but a step from here to the Wells, and we can walk there. I've got tickets for all. Be at Sadler's Wells at eleven.'

'Yes, at eleven,' exclaims Goldmore, perturbedly, and walks with a flurried step into the house, as if he were going to execution (as indeed he was, with that wicked Gray as a Jack Ketch over him). The carriage drove away, followed by numberless eyes from doorsteps and balconies; its appearance is still a wonder in Bittlestone Street.

'Go in there, and amuse yourself with Snob,' says Gray, opening the little drawing-room door. 'I'll call out as soon as the chops are ready. Fanny's below, seeing to the pudding.'

'Gracious mercy!' says Goldmore to me, quite confidentially, 'how could he ask us? I really had no idea of this--this utter destitution.'

'Dinner, dinner!' roars out Gray, from the diningroom, whence issued a great smoking and frying; and entering that apartment we find Mrs. Gray ready to receive us, and looking perfectly like a Princess who, by some accident, had a bowl of potatoes in her hand, which vegetables she placed on the table. Her husband 'was meanwhile cooking mutton-chops on a gridiron over the fire.

Fanny has made the roly-poly pudding,' says he; the chops are my part. Here's a fine one; try this, Goldmore.' And he popped a fizzing cutlet on that gentleman's plate. What words, what notes of exclamation can describe the nabob's astonishment?

The tablecloth was a very old one, darned in a score places. There was mustard in a teacup, a silver fork for Goldmore--all ours were iron.

'I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth,' says Gray, gravely. 'That fork is the only one we have. Fanny has it generally.'

'Raymond!'--cries Mrs. Gray, with an imploring face. 'She was used to better things, you know: and I hope one day to get her a dinner-service. I'm told the electro-plate is uncommonly good. Where the deuce IS that boy with the beer? And now,' said he, springing up, 'I'll be a gentleman.' And so he put on his coat, and sat down quite gravely, with four fresh mutton-chops which he had by this time broiled.

'We don't have meat every day, Mr. Goldmore,' he continued, 'and it's a treat to me to get a dinner like this. You little know, you gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease, what hardships briefless barristers endure.'

'Gracious mercy!' says Mr. Goldmore.

'Where's the half-and-half? Fanny, go over to the 'Keys' and get the beer. Here's sixpence.' And what was our astonishment when Fanny got up as if to go!

'Gracious mercy! let ME,' cries Goldmore.

'Not for worlds, my dear sir. She's used to it. They wouldn't serve you as well as they serve her. Leave her alone. Law bless you!' Raymond said, with astounding composure. And Mrs. Gray left the room, and actually came back with a tray on which there was a pewter flagon of beer. Little Polly (to whom, at her christening, I had the honour of presenting a silver mug EX OFFICIO) followed with a couple of tobacco-pipes, and the queerest roguish look in her round little chubby face.

'Did you speak to Tapling about the gin, Fanny, my dear?' Gray asked, after bidding Polly put the pipes on the chimney-piece, which that little person had some difficulty in reaching. 'The last was turpentine, and even your brewing didn't make good punch of it.'

'You would hardly suspect, Goldmore, that my wife, a Harley Baker, would ever make gin-punch? I think my mother-in-law would commit suicide if she saw her.'

'Don't be always laughing at mamma, Raymond,' says Mrs. Gray.

'Well, well, she wouldn't die, and I DON'T wish she would. And you don't make gin-punch, and you don't like it either and--Goldmore do you drink your beer out of the glass, or out of the pewter?'

'Gracious mercy!' ejaculates Croesus once more, as little Polly, taking the pot with both her little bunches of hands, offers it, smiling, to that astonished Director.

And so, in a word, the dinner commenced, and was presently ended in a similar fashion. Gray pursued his unfortunate guest with the most queer and outrageous description of his struggles, misery, and poverty. He described how he cleaned the knives when they were first married; and how he used to drag the children in a little cart; how his wife could toss pancakes; and what parts of his dress she made. He told Tibbits, his clerk (who was in fact the functionary who had brought the beer from the public-house, which Mrs. Fanny had fetched from the neighbouring apartment)--to fetch 'the bottle of port-wine,' when the dinner was over; and told Goldmore as wonderful a history about the way in which that bottle of wine had come into his hands as any of his former stories had been. When the repast was all over, and it was near time to move to the play, and Mrs. Gray had retired, and we were sitting ruminating rather silently over the last glasses of the port, Gray suddenly breaks the silence by slapping Goldmore on the shoulder, and saying, 'Now, Goldmore, tell me something.'

'What?' asks Croesus.

'Haven't you had a good dinner?'

Goldmore started, as if a sudden truth had just dawned upon him. He HAD had a good dinner; and didn't know it until then. The three mutton-chops consumed by him were best of the mutton kind; the potatoes were perfect of their order; as for the rolypoly, it was too good. The porter was frothy and cool, and the port-wine was worthy of the gills of a bishop. I speak with ulterior views; for there is more in Gray's cellar.

'Well,' says Goldmore, after a pause, during which he took time to consider the momentous question Gray put to him--' 'Pon my word--now you say so--I--I have--I really have had a monsous good dinnah--monsous good, upon my ward! Here's your health, Gray my boy, and your amiable lady; and when Mrs. Goldmore comes back, I hope we shall see you more in Portland Place.' And with this the time came for the play, and we went to see Mr. Phelps at Sadler's Wells. The best of this story (for the truth of every word of which I pledge my honour) is, that after this banquet, which Goldmore enjoyed so, the honest fellow felt a prodigious compassion and regard for the starving and miserable giver of the feast, and determined to help him in his profession. And being a Director of the newly-established Antibilious Life Assurance Company, he has had Gray appointed Standing Counsel, with a pretty annual fee; and only yesterday, in an appeal from Bombay (Buckmuckjee Bobbachee v. Ramchowder-Bahawder) in the Privy Council, Lord Brougham complimented Mr. Gray, who was in the case, on his curious and exact knowledge of the Sanscrit language.

Whether he knows Sanscrit or not, I can't say; but Goldmore got him the business; and so I cannot help having a lurking regard for that pompous old Bigwig.

CHAPTER XXXVI--SNOBS AND MARRIAGE

'We Bachelors in Clubs are very much obliged to you,' says my old school and college companion, Essex Temple, 'for the opinion which you hold of us. You call us selfish, purple-faced, bloated, and other pretty names. You state, in the simplest possible terms, that we shall go to the deuce. You bid us rot in loneliness, and deny us all claims to honesty, conduct, decent Christian life. Who are you, Mr. Snob, to judge us. Who are you, with your infernal benevolent smirk and grin, that laugh at all our generation?

'I will tell you my case,' says Essex Temple; 'mine and my sister Polly's, and you may make what you like of it; and sneer at old maids, and bully old bachelors, if you will.

'I will whisper to you confidentially that my sister was engaged to Serjeant Shirker--a fellow whose talents one cannot deny, and be hanged to them, but whom I have always known to be mean, selfish, and a prig. However, women don't see these faults in the men whom Love throws in their way. Shirker, who has about as much warmth as an eel, made up to Polly years and years ago, and was no bad match for a briefless barrister, as he was then.

Have you ever read Lord Eldon's Life? Do you remember how the sordid old Snob narrates his going out to purchase twopence-worth of sprats, which he and Mrs. Scott fried between them? And how he parades his humility, and exhibits his miserable poverty--he who, at that time, must have been making a thousand pounds a year? Well, Shirker was just as proud of his prudence--just as thankful for his own meanness, and of course would not marry without a competency. Who so honourable? Polly waited, and waited faintly, from year to year. HE wasn't sick at heart; HIS passion never disturbed his six hours' sleep, or kept his ambition out of mind. He would rather have hugged an attorney any day than have kissed Polly, though she was one of the prettiest creatures in the world; and while she was pining alone upstairs, reading over the stock of half-a-dozen frigid letters that the confounded prig had condescended to write to her, HE, be sure, was never busy with anything but his briefs in chambers--always frigid, rigid, self-satisfied, and at his duty. The marriage trailed on year after year, while Mr. Serjeant Shirker grew to be the famous lawyer he is.

'Meanwhile, my younger brother, Pump Temple, who was in the 120th Hussars, and had the same little patrimony which fell to the lot of myself and Polly, must fall in love with our cousin, Fanny Figtree, and marry her out of hand. You should have seen the wedding! Six bridesmaids in pink, to hold the fan, bouquet, gloves, scent-bottle, and pocket-handkerchief of the bride; basketfuls of white favours in the vestry, to be pinned on to the footmen and horses; a genteel congregation of curious acquaintance in the pews, a shabby one of poor on the steps; all the carriages of all our acquaintance, whom Aunt Figtree had levied for the occasion; and of course four horses for Mr. Pump's bridal vehicle.

'Then comes the breakfast, or DEJEUNER, if you please, with a brass band in the street, and policemen to keep order. The happy bridegroom spends about a year's income in dresses for the bridesmaids and pretty presents; and the bride must have a TROUSSEAU of laces, satins, jewel-boxes and tomfoolery, to make her fit to be a lieutenant's wife. There was no hesitation about Pump. He flung about his money as if it had been dross; and Mrs. P. Temple, on the horse Tom Tiddler, which her husband gave her, was the most dashing of military women at Brighton or Dublin.

How old Mrs. Figtree used to bore me and Polly with stories of Pump's grandeur and the noble company he kept! Polly lives with the Figtrees, as I am not rich enough to keep a home for her.

'Pump and I have always been rather distant. Not having the slightest notions about horseflesh, he has a natural contempt for me; and in our mother's lifetime, when the good old lady was always paying his debts and petting him, I'm not sure there was not a little jealousy. It used to be Polly that kept the peace between us.

'She went to Dublin to visit Pump, and brought back grand accounts of his doings--gayest man about town--Aide-de-Camp to the Lord-Lieutenant--Fanny admired everywhere--Her Excellency godmother to the second boy: the eldest with a string of aristocratic Christian-names that made the grandmother wild with delight. Presently Fanny and Pump obligingly came to London, where the third was born.

'Polly was godmother to this, and who so loving as she and Pump now? "Oh, Essex," says she to me, "he is so good, so generous, so fond of his family; so handsome; who can help loving him, and pardoning his little errors?" One day, while Mrs. Pump was yet in the upper regions, and Doctor Fingerfee's brougham at her door every day, having business at Guildhall, whom should I meet in Cheapside but Pump and Polly? The poor girl looked more happy and rosy than I have seen her these twelve years. Pump, on the contrary, was rather blushing and embarrassed.

'I couldn't be mistaken in her face and its look of mischief and triumph. She had been committing some act of sacrifice. I went to the family stockbroker. She had sold out two thousand pounds that morning and given them to Pump. Quarrelling was useless--Pump had the money; he was off to Dublin by the time I reached his mother's, and Polly radiant still. He was going to make his fortune; he was going to embark the money in the Bog of Allen--I don't know what. The fact is, he was going to pay his losses upon the last Manchester steeple-chase, and I leave you to imagine how much principal or interest poor Polly ever saw back again.

'It was more than half her fortune, and he has had another thousand since from her. Then came efforts to stave off ruin and prevent exposure; struggles on all our parts, and sacrifices, that' (here Mr. Essex Temple began to hesitate)--'that needn't be talked of; but they are of no more use than such sacrifices ever are. Pump and his wife are abroad--I don't like to ask where; Polly has the three children, and Mr. Serjeant Shirker has formally written to break off an engagement, on the conclusion of which Miss Temple must herself have speculated, when she alienated the greater part of her fortune.

'And here's your famous theory of poor marriages!' Essex Temple cries, concluding the above history. 'How do you know that I don't want to marry myself? How do you dare sneer at my poor sister? What are we but martyrs of the reckless marriage system which Mr. Snob, forsooth, chooses to advocate?' And he thought he had the better of the argument, which, strange to say, is not my opinion.

But for the infernal Snob-worship, might not every one of these people be happy? If poor Polly's happiness lay in linking her tender arms round such a heartless prig as the sneak who has deceived her, she might have been happy now--as happy as Raymond Raymond in the ballad, with the stone statue by his side. She is wretched because Mr. Serjeant Shirker worships money and ambition, and is a Snob and a coward.

If the unfortunate Pump Temple and his giddy hussy of a wife have ruined themselves, and dragged down others into their calamity, it is because they loved rank, and horses, and plate, and carriages, and COURT GUIDES, and millinery, and would sacrifice all to attain those objects.

And who misguides them? If the world were more simple, would not those foolish people follow the fashion? Does not the world love COURT GUIDES, and millinery, and plate, and carriages? Mercy on us! Read the fashionable intelligence; read the COURT CIRCULAR; read the genteel novels; survey mankind, from Pimlico to Red Lion Square, and see how the Poor Snob is aping the Rich Snob; how the Mean Snob is grovelling at the feet of the Proud Snob; and the Great Snob is lording it over his humble brother. Does the idea of equality ever enter Dives' head? Will it ever? Will the Duchess of Fitzbattleaxe (I like a good name) ever believe that Lady Croesus, her next-door neighbour in Belgrave Square, is as good a lady as her Grace? Will Lady Croesus ever leave off pining the Duchess's parties, and cease patronizing Mrs. Broadcloth whose husband has not got his Baronetcy yet? Will Mrs. Broadcloth ever heartily shake hands with Mrs. Seedy, and give up those odious calculations about poor dear Mrs. Seedy's income? Will Mrs. Seedy who is starving in her great house, go and live comfortably in a little one, or in lodgings? Will her landlady, Miss Letsam, ever stop wondering at the familiarity of tradespeople, or rebuking the insolence of Suky, the maid, who wears flowers under her bonnet like a lady?

But why hope, why wish for such times? Do I wish all Snobs to perish? Do I wish these Snob papers to determine? Suicidal fool, art not thou, too, a Snob and a brother?

CHAPTER XXXVII--CLUB SNOBS

As I wish to be particularly agreeable to the ladies (to whom I make my most humble obeisance), we will now, if you please, commence maligning a class of Snobs against whom, I believe, most female minds are embittered--I mean Club Snobs. I have very seldom heard even the most gentle and placable woman speak without a little feeling of bitterness against those social institutions, those palaces swaggering in St. James's, which are open to the men; while the ladies have but their dingy three-windowed brick boxes in Belgravia or in Paddingtonia, or in the region between the road of Edgware and that of Gray's Inn.

In my grandfather's time it used to be Freemasonry that roused their anger. It was my grand-aunt (whose portrait we still have in the family) who got into the clock-case at the Royal Rosicrucian Lodge at Bungay, Suffolk, to spy the proceedings of the Society, of which her husband was a member, and being frightened by the sudden whirring and striking eleven of the clock (just as the Deputy-Grand-Master was bringing in the mystic gridiron for the reception of a neophyte), rushed out into the midst of the lodge assembled; and was elected, by a desperate unanimity, Deputy-Grand-Mistress for life. Though that admirable and courageous female never subsequently breathed a word with regard to the secrets of the initiation, yet she inspired all our family with such a terror regarding the mysteries of Jachin and Boaz, that none of our family have ever since joined the Society, or worn the dreadful Masonic insignia.

It is known that Orpheus was torn to pieces by some justly indignant Thracian ladies for belonging to an Harmonic Lodge. 'Let him go back to Eurydice,' they said, 'whom he is pretending to regret so.' But the history is given in Dr. Lempriere's elegant dictionary in a manner much more forcible than any this feeble pen can attempt. At once, then, and without verbiage, let us take up this subject-matter of Clubs.

Clubs ought not, in my mind, to be permitted to bachelors. If my friend of the Cuttykilts had not our club, the 'Union Jack,' to go to (I belong to the 'U.J. and nine other similar institutions), who knows but he never would be a bachelor at this present moment? Instead of being made comfortable, and cockered up with every luxury, as they are at Clubs, bachelors ought to be rendered profoundly miserable, in my opinion. Every encouragement should be given to the rendering their spare time disagreeable. There can be no more odious object, according to my sentiments, than young Smith in the pride of health, commanding his dinner of three courses; than middle-aged Jones wallowing (as I may say) in an easy padded arm-chair, over the delicious novel or brilliant magazine; or than old Brown, that selfish old reprobate for whom mere literature has no charms, stretched on the best sofa, sitting on the second edition of THE TIMES, having the MORNING CHRONICLE between his knees, the HERALD pushed in between his coat and waistcoat, the STANDARD under his arm, the GLOBE under the other pinion, and the DAILY NEWS in perusal. 'I'll trouble you for PUNCH, Mr. Wiggins' says the unconscionable old gormandiser, interrupting our friend, who is laughing over the periodical in question.

This kind of selfishness ought not to be. No, no. Young Smith, instead of his dinner and his wine, ought to be, where?--at the festive tea-table, to be sure, by the side of Miss Higgs, sipping the bohea, or tasting the harmless muffin; while old Mrs. Higgs looks on, pleased at their innocent dalliance, and my friend Miss Wirt, the governess, is performing Thalberg's last sonata in treble X., totally unheeded, at the piano.

Where should the middle-aged Jones be? At his time of life, he ought to be the father of a family. At such an hour--say, at nine o'clock at night--the nursery-bell should have just rung the children to bed. He and Mrs. J. ought to be, by rights, seated on each side of the fire by the dining-room table, a bottle of port-wine between them, not so full as it was an hour since. Mrs. J. has had two glasses; Mrs. Grumble (Jones's mother-in-law) has had three; Jones himself has finished the rest, and dozes comfortably until bed-time.

And Brown, that old newspaper-devouring miscreant, what right has HE at a club at a decent hour of night? He ought to be playing his rubber with Miss MacWhirter, his wife, and the family apothecary. His candle ought to be brought to him at ten o'clock, and he should retire to rest just as the young people were thinking of a dance. How much finer, simpler, nobler are the several employments I have sketched out for these gentlemen than their present nightly orgies at the horrid Club.

And, ladies, think of men who do not merely frequent the dining-room and library, but who use other apartments of those horrible dens which it is my purpose to batter down; think of Cannon, the wretch, with his coat off, at his age and size, clattering the balls over the billiard-table all night, and making bets with that odious Captain Spot!--think of Pam in a dark room with Bob Trumper, Jack Deuceace, and Charley Vole, playing, the poor dear misguided wretch, guinea points and five pounds on the rubber!--above all, think--oh, think of that den of abomination, which, I am told, has been established in SOME clubs, called THE SMOKING-ROOM,--think of the debauchees who congregate there, the quantities of reeking whisky-punch or more dangerous sherry-cobbler which they consume;--think of them coming home at cock-crow and letting themselves into the quiet house with the Chubb key;--think of them, the hypocrites, taking off their insidious boots before they slink upstairs, the children sleeping overhead, the wife of their bosom alone with the waning rushlight in the two-pair front--that chamber so soon to be rendered hateful by the smell of their stale cigars: I am not an advocate of violence; I am not, by nature, of an incendiary turn of mind: but if, my dear ladies, you are for assassinating Mr. Chubb and burning down Club-houses in St. James's, there is ONE Snob at who will not think the worse of you.